Dedicated working hours – Issue #91

Hello Explorer,
In the past week I learned that many things we know we assume is general knowledge for everyone, even though it is something that is very specific to the field we study or that we have hobbies in. I started understanding this when someone looked at me flabbergasted after I made a statement, which I believed to be general knowledge, about spiders on massive webs that were observed in the evening, but were missing, web and all, the next morning.
There are two type of spiders, web-living and wandering spiders. Web-living spiders are spiders that spin a web and generally use the web to catch their food. While wandering spiders roam around not spinning a permanent web, but rather overpowers their prey. Wandering spiders may also dig a hole and line it with silk threads, but the threads are only used as a trigger to tell the spider when the food is in range to catch it, however, the web is not used to catch the prey.
Web-living spiders are well known for their many intricate designs that they use to catch their prey. From orb webs, to nets they cast and spring loading webs to catch ants, we know that they have mastered the art of trapping their prey!
Even though many of the web living spiders spin the web once, only to expand, repair and maintain the web throughout their lifetime, this is not the only method that is used. Many spiders will spin a temporary web, use it for a determined time of the day or night, pack it up – by eating it – at the end of their activity period and go to hide and rest. At the start of their next activity period, they will rebuild their entire web again. A good example of temporary web builders is the Bark Spiders.
Bark Spiders are nocturnal and use massive orb webs to capture their prey and immobilize it. Their webs, however, are only built at dusk and used during the evening. As dawn breaks the bark Spider will pack up its web by eating it and will then go and hide on a piece of bark nearby for the day. This practice is a great way to avoid diurnal (day active) predators, like birds, that would make a quick meal of the spider.
Eating the web might seem like a very strange and unnecessary step in these spiders’ daily routine, but they are able to fully recycle their web through eating it. By eating the web, they conserve energy and resources, as spinning webs require a lot of energy and resources. Thus, spinning a new web daily would not be feasible if the spiders weren’t able to recycle it at the end of their activity period.
These spiders have truly perfected the art of dedicated work and resting hours, without losing any resources!
Have you ever seen a spider in a huge web that was only there at certain times of the day? Do you know of other species that have perfected the work life balance? What is the most intricate, beautiful, and strangest spider webs that you have seen? (These might be the same or 3 different webs!)

If you would like to send me a message with your answers, feel free to do so on Instagram @abugmanslife or via email to [email protected].