1,173 results
1,173 results for: Spiders
- Animals
Hanging around Mom’s web helps everybody
For nearly grown spiderlings, lingering in their mother's web instead of setting off on their own turns out to be a boon for the mom, as well as themselves.
- Materials Science
Mammal cells make fake spider silk better
Using long and abundant water-soluble proteins secreted by bioengineered mammal cells, scientists have spun the first artificial spider silk demonstrated to have some of the remarkable mechanical properties of the real thing.
- Health & Medicine
Scrambled Drugs: Transgenic chickens could lay golden eggs
Scientists have created transgenic chickens able to produce foreign proteins—and, potentially, pharmaceuticals—in their eggs.
- Materials Science
Spinning Fine Threads: Silkworms coerced to make better silk
The caterpillars that spin commercial silk can make tougher or more elastic threads, depending on how fast they're forced to spin.
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Hungry spiders tune up web jiggliness
Octonoba spiders tune the sensitivity of their webs according to how hungry they are.
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Hey, we’re richer than we thought!
The latest inventory of life in the United States has turned up an extra 100,000 species of plants, animals, and fungi.
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Spider real estate wars: Wake up early
Big spiders in a colony get prime real estate day after day by spinning webs early.
- Agriculture
Bt corn variety OK for black swallowtails
The first published field study of butterflies and genetically altered corn finds no harm to black swallowtail caterpillars from a common corn variety.
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Wasp redesigns web of doomed spider
A wasp larva injects a spider with a web-altering drug, driving the spider to spin a shelter just right for a wasp cocoon.
- Tech
Miniaturized 3-D Printing: New polymer ink writes tiny structures
A new 3-D printer can build up complex polymer microstructures with features small enough for creating photonic crystals or scaffolds for tissue engineering.
- Animals
Male spiders amputate organs, run faster
Tiny male spiders of a species common to the southeastern United States routinely remove one of their two oversize external sex organs, enabling them to run faster and longer.
- Physics
Why the thinnest sticky hairs rule
The foot hairs of geckos and other creatures that can walk on ceilings may be microscopic because only such slender hairs offer optimal adhesion, regardless of shape.
