The blood running its course in my veins slowed down to be in harmony with my breathing, who was cagey as of to not disperse the air and derange the silk filaments he pirouetted out through his abdomen. In contrast to my anchored fingers wrapped around my camera, the thoughts in my head ran at a million miles per hour firing every neuron along the way. ‘Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly, “‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;’ sparked at one point. A poem penned by Mary Howitt where the spider is personified as a cunning insect luring his meals into his luxurious den. With a firm belief in, “Every story has two sides” and wanting to advocate for the spider from his dock I found the most interesting side of the anecdote.
What if I told you “the conniving traps” of the ever so guileful was not much of a trap after all, instead a protective mechanism for the birds. Let’s put this case of enigma to rest. Orb webs of the spiders consists of webs that are made from proteinous silk called the MA silk that reflects UV light; visible to the eye of the bird unlike that homo sapiens, thus preventing the bird from diving head first and entwine itself into the sturdy webs.
An array of objections will make its way up maxim, “What are the chances a bird flies into a web and isn’t strong enough to ravel itself out?” “How is this helpful”
Notes ready in our hands for the rebuttal, “Maybe the number of birds flying into a web may be low but the average number of birds that die each year by crashing into glass dances around 1 million!”
Taking inspiration from our “conniving” friends – the spider, scientists in the UK have created spider web glass that reflects UV rays and thus protecting the birds from crashing into the glass buildings.
From the vast ocean of knowledge to swim through this story had the most compelling second side.