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Spiders on Different Drugs Spin Different Types of Web Patterns

They do pretty well on LSD, but can't build for shit on caffeine

By Rain Noe - November 28, 2017

in Object Culture

In 1948, Swiss zoologist H.M. Peters was studying how spiders build their webs. But he kept falling asleep during the observation process, as spiders typically build their webs nocturnally. Frustrated, he asked colleague Peter N. Witt if there was something Witt could give the spiders that would make them build webs earlier in the day.

Witt was a pharmacologist. So he started giving the spiders psychoactive drugs dissolved in droplets of water, one drug per spider.

"Hey there, little guy...do you like to party?"

The drugs didn't change the spider's build schedules; they stubbornly stuck to their 2am to 5am work hours. But they did drastically influence the spiders' architecture skills. According to Priceonomics,

Spiders dosed with sleeping drugs became "very drowsy," skipped spinning the longest, most challenging radial threads (those on the outer corners of the frame), and left huge gaps in their webs; Benzedrine caused the spiders to spin a spiral "that zig-zagged like an unsteady walker" and induced the inability to locate precise spots within the web; marijuana made the insects omit altogether the inner part of the web; scopolamine, which has hallucinogenic effects in humans, destroyed the spiders' sense of direction altogether.

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NASA repeated the experiment in 1995 and found much the same thing: Spiders on drugs tend not to finish their webs, and depending on which drug they're on, make some odd design choices.

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We would next like to see this test administered to modern-day starchitects. The hope is that some of them may design buildings that are actually rectilinear.

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James Martell

6 years ago

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc

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- Tucker Drake
  
  James Martell
  
  6 years ago
  
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  Was just coming here to post that.
  
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Bruce Schneider

6 years ago

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"We would next like to see this test administered to modern-day starchitects. The hope is that some of them may design buildings that are actually rectilinear."

How do you think the "open concept" came about? ;)

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Noodle Time

6 years ago

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great test for spiders, not sure how applicable it is to humans, since i would imagine the drugs are metabolized differently. But either way, the LSD web looks almost more precise.... maybe why they are testing LSD in low dose again for boosting creativity and concentration.

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Luke Fabis

6 years ago

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Bah! We hit peak rectilinearity in the heyday of brutalist architecture, and now the world is polluted with inhuman concrete obscenities for many decades to come.

If anything, we need more architects that act like the media's favorite starchitects. If every little drafter tasked with coming up with generic for-rent office parks and McMansion housing developments tapped into their inner starchitect and made blobs and webs and organic spirals reminiscent of Zaha Hadid spooning Santiago Calatrava while tripping balls on some unknown drug supplied by Frank Gehry, and fought to make those designs happen, the world would be a much more interesting place, even if the no-nonsense cheapskate sensibilities of the people planning those office parks and housing developments have to be somewhat appeased.

Or it would be a monumental disaster once the third-rate construction crews tasked with building said office parks and housing developments start cutting corners and taking shortcuts to meet some stupidly tight deadline. Who really knows?

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George Mokray

6 years ago

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Caffeine is a powerful drug, at least for the construction sense of spiders.

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