Nice Web Mr. CrackSpider

Perhaps the best thing I've ever seen. Remember when I blogged a bit about the effects of psychoactive drugs on the web-building activities of spiders? Well little did I know that the experiment was actually filmed.

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There is an entire family of wasps who use other species to raise their young, and they're a seemingly endless source of sci-fi worthy parasites. I've covered a few of them before, but none is quite so elegant as Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga, a Costa Rican wasp with a fascinating and unique way of…
tags: spider, web building, mind-altering drugs, streaming video This streaming video documents that spiders web-building abilities are affected by exposure to mind-altering drugs, like weed, as demonstrated by in 1960 Dr. Peter Witt. [1:49].
Since everyone is posting about spiders this week, I though I'd republish a sweet old post of mine, which ran on April 19, 2006 under the title "Happy Bicycle Day!" I hope you like this little post as much as I enjoyed writing it: This week's theme for the Tar Heel Tavern is bicycle. I was…
Since everyone is posting about spiders this week, I though I'd republish a sweet old post of mine, which ran on April 19, 2006 under the title "Happy Bicycle Day!" I hope you like this little post as much as I enjoyed writing it: This week's theme for the Tar Heel Tavern is bicycle. I was…

Words simply fail me. Golly.

By Charlie (Colorado) (not verified) on 25 May 2007 #permalink

A friend who directed me to this several months ago recently told me that it had been withdrawn. ("Canadian Gov't" logo?) Glad it's still there. It's awesome!

By baryogenesis (not verified) on 25 May 2007 #permalink

O, totally neat!
Encountered this some months before, and then lost the bookmark - many thanks for re-establishing one of my web favourites! Kia ora, cheers -

By Keri Hulme (not verified) on 25 May 2007 #permalink

We covered this on New Scientist when I was freelancing for them in the early 1990s, great to see live action footage though, thanks.

Speaking of spiders...if you need molecular structures www.Chemspider.com has 13 million of them all easily searchable and with a Firefox/Ie7 search addon to boot.

Oh, by the way, I produce a chemistry blog called Spinneret for the site.

db

This may represent a new danger to all humans! Insectipomorphising our world view and social values until we all become part of the hive mind! And then! . . .ooooohhhh . . .

Thanks. Great fun!

By Crudely Wrott (not verified) on 30 May 2007 #permalink