The effects of drugs on spiderwebs

[ultrafilter]

From the NY Times:

In 1948 a frustrated zoologist at the University of Tubingen in West Germany turned to his pharmacologist colleague for help in photographing orb-web spiders in the process of constructing their homes. The spiders normally perform this task in the dark around 5 A.M., which is not exactly ideal for movie making. The zoologist wondered if his subjects might be drugged into changing their construction time.

Young Dr. Witt had no trouble feeding the spiders sugar water spiked with various stimulants or tranquilizers; the animals normally liquefy their food before sucking it into their gut and, Dr. Witt said, ‘‘They are always so short of water that they quickly learn to come to your syringe.’’ But the movie-making zoologist was not exactly pleased with the results. The drugged spiders still built their webs in the early-morning darkness, and now the resulting webs were bizarrely abnormal, as if built by a drunk.

The zoologist abandoned the movie, but the pharmacologist was hooked. Here, he explained in a recent interview, was a reliably reproducible means of assessing the behavioral effects of drugs with mind-altering potential. Each drug seemed to produce characteristic aberrations in the spiders’ webs, changes far more reliable than the behavioral effects of drugs observed in laboratory rats or human subjects.

Here’s a neat little short film that details exactly how each drug affects a spider’s web.

[Autolycus]

Building webs is for suckas.

[Pine_Fresh_Scent]

Valuable lessons from nature. I have forwarded this video to close friends.

[IvoryTowerDenizen]

Ok, so I thought it was real until the restraining order. I’m the sucka. I don’t want to spoiler the joke for anyone else!

That was really awesome.

[LVgeogeek]

I love that video. (it is one of my favorites)

“Nice web, Mr. Crack Spider!”

[Mangetout]

If you liked that, you may like this:

The Birds Of Britain

[GomiBoy]

I almost peed myself. You people suck.

[Mangetout]

- YouTube

[Borborygmi]

Well, I’m blocked from YouTube at work and have dial-up at home, so I have no idea what’s really going on with this thread. But why let that stop me from barrelling in on it anyway?

I’ll just chime in that I’m partial to these photos used in Wikipedia’s article on caffeine.

[Tuckerfan]

@LVgeogeek

I love that video. (it is one of my favorites)

“Nice web, Mr. Crack Spider!”

When winter came, the marijuana spider had no place to live. It ended up in the Crack Spider’s web, as the Crack Spider’s bitch.

[Shagnasty]

I have known spiders that fell into each of those traps. The main one that they left off was meth spiders. They infiltrate drug stores and steal the cold medicine after hours. Then, their face either rots off or they blow up themselves and every web around them in spectacular fashion.

[Larry_Mudd]

How familiar to people outside of Canada is the wildlife vignette series this is a parody of? Takes me back.

[ultrafilter]

@Larry Mudd

How familiar to people outside of Canada is the wildlife vignette series this is a parody of? Takes me back.

I’m not familiar with it. Is it standard primary school material?

[Mangetout]

@Larry Mudd

How familiar to people outside of Canada is the wildlife vignette series this is a parody of? Takes me back.

I’ve seen wildlife documentaries that were very similar, presumably upon which this was based - I only remember the content of one of them - it was about beavers building a dam.

[TheLoadedDog]

Bravo.

[Santo_Rugger]

@Mangetout

I’ve seen wildlife documentaries that were very similar, presumably upon which this was based - I only remember the content of one of them - it was about beavers building a dam.

But have you seen beavers building their dams, on WEED?

[Larry_Mudd]

@ultrafilter

I’m not familiar with it. Is it standard primary school material?

They were one-minute short subjects produced by the National Film Board and shown as filler material on the CBC approximately every 23 minutes during the 1970s. (Here’s the one Mangetout remembers, and another about woodchucks.)

I miss the little appeals to contact the Canadian Wildlife Service in Ottawa at the end. “If you require more a more thorough understanding of the mating habits of sandpipers, you can always contact the Canadian Wildlife Service, in Ottawa.” Good times.

[Malthus]

@Santo Rugger

But have you seen beavers building their dams, on WEED?

They don’t.

They just sit around in the basement of their parent’s lodges chewing on birch chips and talking about how dam-building is a sucker’s game, part of the conspiracy to keep 'em busy so they won’t expand their minds.