Prisoner in Amaraun

2001/03/01 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Zoologia

Spiders are characterized by their webs. Who has not been hit by one of those thin, smooth meshes when it enters a dark place or goes into the forest? The spiders love isolated and quiet places, but they also have to expand their network in other more varied places to hunt.

Although we may think that the production of silk threads was born with spiders, in the Paleozoic (about 320 million years ago) they still had no capacity to spin and grind. Like today, their prey were mainly insects without wings. But when 260 million years ago winged insects appeared, spiders changed their form of hunting and, by natural selection, advanced those able to make networks.

Spiders produce various types of silk thread. They are made of a protein called fibroma and are made in glands of five or six classes. Each of the glands is specialized in a type of silk and its use is different. On the other hand, the fabric of arama is not only able to withstand a huge tension, but it is very elastic. It is more resistant than any other natural fiber known and more elastic than nylon.

Although dams may not agree, spiders do wonderful works of art.