Amazing Spiders and Their Webs

During the process of making a web the spider will use its own body for measurements, a very practical and ergonomic design feature of any web. This will allow the spider to move quickly and efficiently around its own web with very few faults.

Administering certain drugs to spiders has an effect on the structure of the webs they build. It has also been observed that being in Earth's orbit has an effect on the structure of spider webs in space.

Spider webs are rich in vitamin K which is used to help stop bleeding. Spider webs were used centuries ago as a coagulant in place of gause pads. (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_web)

If you thought the elephant and the mouse relationship was hard to fathom check out Fritz Volltrath, who is studying the route a spider takes to build a web as an indication of the decisions it makes along the way. He then uses this information to better understand elephant tracks and the cognitive processes elephants go through to produce them. (From "Oxford Today" Hillary Issue 2007)

Amanita Muscaria

An exploratory walk on Dartmoor led Anna, Rebecca and I to an amazing tree surrounded by fly agaric (amanita muscaria) mushrooms in different phases of growth and decay. The brightness of the colors and the day were simply stunning.

As we were playing with sound to become more familiar with my little digital recorder, the fly agarics suddenly seemed to have lots to say. We stayed with them for a while, but then they got so esoteric that we lost them and had to move on to some shit we could understand.