ABC Wednesday W for Web

Click to enlarge, please! These photos are taken in my garden.

From Wikipedia:"Spiders initially started producing silk for reasons other than web-making. When spiders moved from the water to the land in the Early Devonian period(416 to 359.2 million years ago) , they started making silk to protect their bodies and their eggs. Spiders gradually started using silk for hunting purposes, first as guide lines and signal lines, then as ground or bush webs, and eventually as the aerial webs which are so famous today.

Spiders produce silken thread using several paired spinneret glands located at the tip of their abdomen. Each gland produces a thread for a special purpose – for example a trailed safety line, sticky silk for trapping prey or fine silk for wrapping it. Spiders use different gland types to produce different silks, and some spiders are capable of producing up to 8 different silks during their lifetime.

Most spiders have three pairs of spinnerets, each having its own function – there are also spiders with just one pair and others with as many as four pairs.

Webs allow a spider to catch prey without having to expend energy by running it down. Thus it is an efficient method of gathering food. However, constructing the web is in itself an energetically costly process due to the large amount of protein required, in the form of silk. In addition, after a time the silk will lose its stickiness and thus become inefficient at capturing prey. It is not uncommon for spiders to eat their own web daily to recoup some of the energy used in spinning. The silk proteins are thus recycled."

With thanks to Denise Nesbitt, who created ABC.For more interesting ABC posts click on the logo in the sidebar or Here. This week we are looking for words beginning with W.

I wished I had taken these two beautiful photos myself!!! They are from Wikipedia.