Picture of the day - August 4, 2005

Dew On A Spider Web

Dew on a spider web.
Photo courtesy of PD Photo. 

Beauty can often be found in even the most mundane things, even a heavy morning dew clinging to a spider web. This exquisitely detailed close-up clearly shows many individual dew droplets reflecting the light of the rising sun.

Spider webs can often be seen early in the morning...meaning perhaps that spiders prefer to catch their prey at night. What amazes me is how quickly spiders can build their webs, even rather large ones.


Spider webs are among nature's most interesting structures. When a spider spins a web, it produces some silk threads that are sticky and others that aren't. It knows exactly which strands of the web to step on to prevent getting caught in its own web! Other insects come into contact with the sticky silk threads and...it's dinner time!

The extremely thin strands of silk that spider webs are woven from are among the strongest materials on the planet for their size. This is why a spider web can trap and hold insects several times larger than the spider that spun the web!
 

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