Crew is Accompanied by Spiders and Mice
The New York Times

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Special la The New York Time*
CAPE KENNEDY, Fla., July
28—When the Skylab 2 asto-
nauts left the earth today, they
were accompanied by a menag-
erie of tiny creatures—-pocket
mice, minnows, vinegar gnats,
flies and two female spiders,
This unusual cargo was part
of more than 60 scientific ex-
periments scheduled to be per-
formed during the planned 59-
day Skylab 2 mission in earth
orbit.
The mice and the gnats rodef
in a self-contained living com-
partment inside the service
module, the equipment unit at
the rear of the Apollo command
module. The fish and spiders
were to be taken into the
Skylab workshop. The flies
were going along as food for
the spiders.
The two spiders, named Ara-
bella and Anita, were included
in the mission at the suggestion
of Judith Miles, a 17-year-old
high school student from Lex-
ington, Mass. She is one of 19
high school students around
the country whose experiments
were selected for the mission.
‘T thought it would be inter*
esting: I®’ see hqi^weightless-
ncss would, affect their web
Wiles ex-
plained.
The , *S£öss s§j.ders were
chosen becauswKpr arel||R-
n|iln ai|| fheijij:.
habits have been well studied.
Females were picked becaufffl
I are    |l&||
webs than wfflB–.
Tltei .spiders went into sbaW
insilfc! a traveiifg^itse #bog
the sit#:-of a
14; th@Äk toMS»®p fidysi
the astronauts arc: to put the
spiders in a 15-inch-sauare cage
4y||:-:ere tiiw \ c^»l|«ie ana
photograph Ehe spiders’ activ-
ics.
On earth idHBfi’ use two
organs on their forelegs to de-
termine the direction of grav-
ity—up front down. Without
gravity, will the spiders have
trouble® spinning their AVeb?
Will the patterns ,of the yfeb
be different? These are among
United Press International
Dr. Peter N. Witt, research director of North Carolina Department of Mental Health,
measuring size of web spun by a cross spider. Two of the spiders are on present Sky-
lab mission to enable scientists to study effects of weightlessness on web-building.
llop.es |.p aiifllp-
ling the lltronauts’ pictures fl
Arabella and.. .Anita in orbit.
iimDrMfoen K. Garriott’s
idea take Aafeng mfafc
nows and 50 minnow eggs. H.e
is the mission’s scientist-astro-
lfe|vants
fih wilt become disoriented in
Weightlessness and swim in
spirals “instead of a straight
pMB
The two live minnows should
fln|    two weeks after
the questions that Miss lyi’lcs they arrive at Skylab. By then
the. eggs should hatchßgiving
thfcE astronauts about
weeksto observe the fish adapt-
ing zer,o4 gravity in their
plastic aquarium,
i. The mice and gnats are part
pf a study to determine if
space flight alters the daily
physiological rhythms, or bio-
logical clocks, of mammals or
the emergence of gnats from
the pupal stage.
During the flight, body tem-
peratures and activity level of
the six mice will be monitored
automatically and this data will
be compared with the perform-
ance of ground-based mice,
^^^»imenl^ On earth show
that vinegar gnats do not
emerge from the pupae as|
adults until some kind of in-
ternal signal is given. This sig-
nal can be triggered by a flash
of light in the laboratory.
So on Skylab a light will be
flashed in the gnats’ darkened
container at different times for
the four groups of pupae to
see if the gnats emerge in dif-
ferent ways and times in
weightlessness.
Rhodesian Students Protest
Charges Against University
•Special ffijb The N-cJBpIL
SALISBURY, Rhodesia, July’
28—About 300 students of the
multiracial University of Rho-1
desia demonstrated yesterday
against allegations by a mem-
ber of Parliament that the uni-
versity was “a center of filth,,
prostitution and troublc-mak-
ing.”
j*|f|fke police stood ‘by as th®
students, most of them black,
marched past Parliament: and
the ofice of Prime Minister Ian
J.^Spji.thA,
• The . target of the. protest
demonstration, which was
peaceful, was Rodney Sirn-
nionds, a Government Member
of Parliament who had said on
Wednesday that there had been
a “deplorable, decline in civ-
ilized standards” at the uni-
versity. Mr. Simmonds said in
Parliament that in one resi-
dential block, prostitutes ac-
costed students in their rooms
and there were pools of urine
on a washroom floor.
The university principal, Prof.
Robert Craig, characterized
Mr. Simomnd’s remarks as
“nonsense.’’
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