What happened to the spiders’ webs as they spent more time in the near weightlessness of the space station?
Bonus points if you know the names of NASA’s two eight-legged astronauts.
NASA’s Eight-Legged Experiment
In 1973, NASA sent two common cross spiders into space aboard Skylab 3 to answer a seemingly straightforward question: if a spider normally uses gravity to help build a web, what happens when it experiences less gravity? Let’s just say the spiders’ first efforts were not “stellar.”
Anita and Arabella demonstrated that spiders could improvise when one of their usual resources (gravity) loosened its grip. The experiment itself had an unexpected origin, and keeping its tiny test subjects alive and well required improvisation from the human crew.
Q1. Who came up with the idea of sending spiders to Skylab to study their webs?
Q2. What did ground controllers eventually tell astronaut Owen Garriott to share with the spiders from crew rations?
Admit it, a space station with spiders as part of the crew is a pretty solid “Weird Wednesday”. But things only get weirder from here, including more space spiders, the very first animals in space, Hollywood spiders, and more.
Q3. In a later space experiment, what did orb-weaving spiders use as an orientation guide when gravity was less than normal?
Q6. During filming of the film Arachnophobia, how did the film crew usually persuade the real spiders to move in the directions they needed?
Q7. The word “gossamer” describes something delicate or light, including clothing. Originally, it referred to spiders’ webs or threads seen in fields during what time of year?
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Q1. A. A high school student. It was Judith Miles from Lexington, MA, who proposed the idea after reading about spider behavior in a National Geographic article. Her idea became “Web Formation in Zero Gravity,” one of the student experiments selected for Skylab.
Naturally, it was not all that simple to provide spiders with safe enclosures in microgravity. While NASA came up with housing, room service was another challenge. Q2. D. Filet mignon. The official 1973 flight record has NASA officials recording that controllers told Garriott to share his portion of filet mignon with the spiders to keep them alive through the mission.
Q3. B. Light. Researchers studying spiders aboard the International Space Station discovered that when lights were on, the spiders used the direction of the lights as an orientation cue. When the lights were off, the spiders’ positioning became far more random.
Of course, spiders were not the first non-humans to enter space from Earth. In fact, non-humans beat humans in the space race. Q4. A. Fruit flies. The United States launched fruit flies aboard a V-2 rocket in February of 1947 to study the effects of cosmic radiation. Their capsule parachuted back to Earth, and the flies survived the entire experience.
Of course, here on Earth, spiders are pretty impressive without any help from NASA. Q5. D. Laos. Researchers described the giant huntsman spider after finding it in Laos in 2001. With a leg span of roughly 12-inches, it holds the title for the largest spider measured using that metric.
And if that terrifies you, just remember that Hollywood has never needed zero-gravity or measuring tools to make spiders horrifying. Q6. B. They used warm air and vibrating wires. The film's director, Frank Marshall, said the spiders couldn’t be trained, so the animal wranglers got them to move using thin, vibrating wires and portable hair dryers blowing in the right direction.
Although spiders have been creeping across movie screens for decades, they’ve been making their way through the English language for much longer.
Q7. C. Late autumn. Around the 1300s, gossamer referred to the fine spider threads appearing over fields of stubble in late fall. The term seems to come from older words for “goose” and “summer,” and is probably associated with those last days of summer-like weather that often appear when frosty days are also expected. So, one of the prettiest words in English owes its existence to spiders and the webs they weave! |
