The real story about Spiders is much stranger than fiction. Make sure you subscribe to Creation Magazine and stay tuned in to the wondrous works of the Almighty Creator of the Universe and all that is therein. The Author’s biography can be accessed by clicking on his name.

Just click the link below for details of Creation Magazine:

https://creation.com/en/creation-magazine

Gibber! Gibber!

Chugley

Spiders

Creepy crawlies or masterful masterpieces

by Arthur Manning

Spider-man has some amazing abilities, but he’s just science fiction. Much more amazing are the real spiders, whose abilities put the webslinger to shame. Can you imagine weaving an intricate web with your hands behind your back? How about throwing out a thread of silk which catches the wind, transporting you thousands of miles? Spiders do these things and so much more.

What is a spider? Spiders are arthropods (animals with jointed appendages) with two main body regions, four pairs of walking legs, and silk glands in their abdomen. They also have fangs and most have eight eyes. They usually have six spinnerets, structures on their abdomen from which their silk is extruded.

Spiders use their silk to construct not just webs, but also egg sacs, and draglines, as well as to ‘wrap’ their prey. Each spinneret has several tiny spigots from which the silk, which is stored in the silk glands in a liquid form, emerges. When it is drawn out from the spinneret (which can be by using one of its legs), it turns into a solid. But this is not the result of drying out. Instead, the liquid solidifies because the tension aligns the protein molecules into a parallel arrangement in which they bond together.An individual spider can have as many as seven different kinds of silk glands, each of which opens through particular kinds of spigots on particular spinnerets.

The different kinds of silk are highly complex protein molecules. That of one spider, Nephila, has a molecular weight as a liquid nearly 2,000 times that of a water molecule, and as a solid about ten times greater than that again.¹

The threads of spider silk are extremely thin, some with a diameter under 1 micron (a thousandth of a millimetre).

Spider silk is twice as elastic as nylon. Its tensile strength (reflecting how much stretching force it can withstand without breaking) in some cases exceeds that of steel. Astonishingly, it can also respond differently to different stresses!²

World expert Norman Platnick, known as ‘The real spider-man’, writes:

An individual spider can have as many as seven different kinds of silk glands, each of which opens through particular kinds of spigots on particular spinnerets.³

Female garden orb-weaving spiders produce seven different kinds of silk, each used for a different purpose and with different properties. Spider authority Rainer Foelix writes:

During the construction of a web or cocoon, the spinnerets must move independently, yet must be able to work together in a highly coordinated manner. The spinnerets can move in several ways: lifting, lowering, twisting, and also a synchronous spreading of all spinnerets can be observed. The effective working range of the spinnerets is enhanced to a great extent by the movements of the abdomen.⁴

These complex, instinctive behaviours are reflexes prompted by the right environmental cues and are certainly not consciously directed by the spider’s mind. The sequences of these actions must be programmed in the spider’s DNA.

Orb-web-weaving spiders produce the beautiful circular webs that we sometimes see in our gardens. Recent research has highlighted the complex, dance-like choreographed sequence of steps which all orb weavers in the genus Uloborus perform in constructing their webs. An evolutionist biologist has called it “incredibly elegant”.⁵

Foelix says, “The orb web is often considered the evolutionary summit of web-building spiders.”⁶

Evolutionary dilemma

However, this kind of web presents a problem for evolution. This is because the 3,000 known species of orb weaver spider are in two major groups, each group using a quite different kind of thread. This is a barrier to the idea that one evolved from the other, or both from an ancestral group of orb-weavers. So it is believed that each must have evolved independently.

But this means that for evolution to be true, the intricate instinctive skill leading to this exact web design must have just happened to have evolved twice through blind, chance mutations, selected by whatever environment happened to be at hand. As Foelix admits:

It is rather hard to imagine how such a complex structure could have come about at all, yet it is even more difficult to explain how an orb web could develop in two different groups of spiders.⁴

The more than 48,000 species of spiders display an enormous variety of webs. A recent monumental book on spider webs devotes 816 pages to them!⁷

Jumping spiders

This is the largest spider family, called the Salticidae. It comprises over 6,000 species of jumping spider in over 600 genera. Their jumps are extremely accurate and are aided by excellent vision. Interestingly, Harvard researchers have recently started to develop microsensors for robots by copying the ingenious way a jumping spider’s eyes deliberately use ‘out-of-focus’ to precisely judge their leaps.⁸

Some species of salticids can jump up to 25 times their body length. Just before taking off, the spider attaches a thread of ‘dragline’ silk to the ground. Its sole purpose was once thought to be as a safety line, but it also plays a crucial role in providing in-air stability and optimal landing.⁹

Cartwheeling spiders

Some dune spiders (such as those in genus Carparachne) can flip their bodies sideways and cartwheel down a sand dune. They use this behaviour to escape predatory wasps. The spider appears like a blur as it travels more than 1 m (3 ft) per second, spinning at 20 revolutions each second!

Spider navigation

Most spiders are solitary … sociality in spiders is said to have evolved independently multiple times—again stretching credulity.

Males of the desert spider Leucorchestris arenicola go on long nighttime travels looking for females. Their outbound trip meanders considerably, yet they return to their burrow by a straight path. “… we can only marvel how some males can make an 800-metre [2,500-ft] round trip and still find their home burrow in the dark.”¹⁰

Social spiders

Most spiders are solitary. However, about 20 species gather in peaceful colonies. Up to 1,000 individuals of Anelosimus eximius may live peacefully in one web, which can have a volume of 1,000 m³ ( 35,000 ft³). Sociality in spiders is said to have evolved independently multiple times—again stretching credulity.

Spider venom

Almost all spiders have venom glands. But only about 200 species are dangerously poisonous to humans. The venom glands of the spitting spider, Scytodes, not only produce venom, but also silk and a gluelike substance. It catches its prey by first quickly spitting silk and glue onto it. On contact with the prey the silk contracts by 50% and the glue attaches it to the ground, immobilizing it. Then this spider injects venom into its prey.

Spider evolution?

According to Foelix:

I must admit, however, that our real knowledge of the phylogeny [evolutionary history] of spiders is quite scanty, and hence to present any reliable pedigree is quite impossible … 90% of fossil spiders are from the Tertiary period and are thus relatively young … ; they resemble extant [living] families so closely that they provide hardly any clues as to their phylogeny [how they supposedly evolved].¹¹

So, those supposed 65 million years, i.e. about 65 million generations, show no evidence of evolution.

Foelix continues:

… there should be only one evolutionary history that is correct. However, to reconstruct the ‘correct’ evolutionary pathway is quite difficult. Usually only probable hypotheses can be formulated, and even those have to be constantly adjusted as new observations and insights come to light.¹²

He concludes:

… cladograms on mygalomorph taxonomy [i.e., evolutionary diagrams on tarantula and funnel-web classification] came out quite different when molecular analyses (rRNA genes) had been used … in comparison to cladograms that are based on morphological [structural] characters … and it is difficult to say which one is closer to the truth.¹³

If evolution really had occurred, we would expect to see the same pattern indicated by both molecular and structural comparisons.

More types of special spiders

Recluse spiders draw out their web-making silk by only using the spinnerets, not their legs. “The anterior lateral spinnerets are moved rapidly, up to 13 times per second, with the accumulating silk held by the posterior spinnerets.”¹

Cellar spiders are common world-wide. They can invade another spider’s web and vibrate the silk to mimic a trapped insect. When the host spider comes after its supposed prey, the cellar spider quickly captures it with sticky silk. When the cellar spider is in its own web, if it is disturbed, it swings so rapidly on its web that it appears to us as a blur.²

The has wide-open chelicerae (fang-bearing appendages) with tiny hairs on their inner surfaces. When prey contact these hairs, the chelicerae snap shut extremely rapidly. In some species this happens in 0.00012 seconds! The force of closing is due to a rapid release of stored energy, not just muscular contraction.³

Bolas spiders utilize a unique method of hunting. As they hang from a horizontal line of silk,

… they swing a silk line, or ‘bola’, made of coiled silk and glue, with a sticky globule at its end. Once this globule strikes a moth, it rarely escapes. Bolas spiders can attract their prey, in complete darkness, because they emit chemical components that mimic the sex pheromones of the moth species.⁴

Ant-mimicking spiders.There are more than 175 species of jumping spiders that mimic ants. They do this not to attack the ants, but to benefit from the protection afforded by associating with these formidable insects. Yet the ants do not bother them. They move along with the front legs elevated to look like the antennae of the ants. “Juveniles typically do not mimic the same ant species as the adults, but rather a different, smaller, and often very different-looking ant species that occurs in the same area.”^{5Page nos. after each ref. no. are all Platnick, N., Spiders of the World: A Natural History, Princeton University Press, 2020.
1: p. 67; 2: p. 77; 3: pp. 100–101; 4: p. 159; 5: pp. 248–249.}

Were there venomous spiders before the Fall?

The biblical ‘big picture’, so crucial to the Gospel, is firstly that all of creation was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Then, due to the first couple’s rebellion against their Maker, the entire creation was cursed (Genesis 3), ushering in this present reign of suffering and death (Romans 8:18–22, 1 Corinthians 15:21). Christ’s triumph on the Cross will culminate in a coming restoration of all things (Acts 3:21), back to an Edenic sinless, deathless state (Revelation 21:4) on a restored Earth (2 Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:1). Adding millions of years to the Bible undermines all this, because it would place the death and suffering evident in the fossils well before humans—hence, before any Fall.

Animals savagely killing others to eat them obviously could not have been part of the pre-Fall earth, and CMI has written extensively about the changes that must have taken place in the animal kingdom and how they relate to the design argument.¹ But what about spiders injecting venom from well-designed glands into their prey to kill and eat them; did these things only happen post-Fall (and then how do we explain the change)? Maybe so, as suggested by the existence of a vegetarian spider.²

But perhaps not; CMI has cogently argued that the Bible’s stance on no death in nephesh chayyāh (living beings, or ‘soulish’ creatures) seems to be restricted to the death of truly sentient creatures, capable of suffering, such as vertebrates.³ Plants and bacteria, e.g., are obviously not ‘alive’ (and therefore can’t be said to ‘die’) in that biblical sense. And the same is probably true of insects (along with many other invertebrates, including spiders). For one thing, insects don’t seem to experience pain (a dragonfly is capable of calmly eating its own abdomen). So spiders may have been spinning their webs, catching insects and injecting their non-nephesh insect prey prior to the entry of biblically-defined death.

1. See Chap 6, ‘How did bad things come about’ in The Creation Answers Book, Creation Book Publishers, Powder Springs, Georgia, 9th Edn, 2018; creation.com/cab6.
2. Catchpoole, D., Vegetarian spider, Creation 31(4):46, 2009; creation.com/vegetarian-spider.
3. Pitman, D., Nephesh chayyāh: A matter of life … and non-life, creation.com/nephesh-chayyah, 8 Apr 2014.

Conclusion

We don’t have to look far to see the wonders of God’s creation. Spiders are everywhere. When you observe these creatures, take the opportunity to tell others some things about them which point to our Creator.

Posted on homepage: 28 October 2024

References and notes for the main articl

1. Foelix, R., Biology of Spiders, Oxford University Press, 3rd Edn, p.136, 2011. The name Nephila has nothing to do with the Nephilim of Genesis 6:4. Rather, Nephila comes from Greek meaning ‘thread-lover’ or ‘lover of spinning’. Return to text.
2. Sarfati, J., Spider silk: both strong and smart, Creation 34(3):56, 2012; creation.com/smart-silk. Return to text.
3. Platnick, N., Spiders of the World: A Natural History, Princeton University Press, p. 12, 2020. Return to text.
4. Foelix, ref. 1, p. 147. Return to text.
5. Bell, P., Dance of the web-weavers, Creation 44(2):41, 2022; creation.com/web-weavers. Return to text.
6. Foelix, ref. 1, p. 182. Return to text.
7. Eberhard, W., Spider Webs: Behavior, Function, and Evolution, University of Chicago Press, 2020. Return to text.
8. Sarfati, J., Robots inspired by jumping spider, creation.com/robot-spider-eyes, 18 Feb 2020. Return to text.
9. Chen, Y-K and 3 others, More than a safety line: jump-stabilizing silk of salticids, J. Roy. Soc. Interface, 10(87):20130572. Return to text.
10. Foelix, ref. 1, p. 131. Return to text.
11. Foelix, ref. 1, p. 327. Return to text.
12. Foelix, ref. 1, p. 334. Return to text.
13. Foelix, ref. 1, p. 335. Return to text.