Oh, What A Tangled Web They Weave…
The Australian

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Oh, what
vmilmkä
web they
«.’Jf-QJt-‘ THE’ past 22 years?-
? an American ” psycholo- [«
gist, Dr Peter Witt, Has ‘
been : systematically de-,
ranging spiders.
He has dosed them with •
mescalin, caffeine, carbon
monoxide, amphetamines —
and most of the other drugs
or substances which have
an ill-effect on humans.
The results of’-‘this work
have been predictably hor-
rifying and scientifically in-
conclusive. His stone spi-
ders, among the most ad-
mired artificers of nature,
have spun’ webs which are
Right, a web spun by a female spider ’without drugs
and (left) a web spun by the same spider’ after a
I dose of liSD. . V.* ■
both ugly and inefficentc at
catching flies.
Normally every morning
the spider makes the web in
20 to 30 minutes by laying
down radii at set intervals
and crossing the *• radii In
pendulum ‘and round turns
to lay the insect-catching,
zones. Then it settles down
at the hub with his eight
legs.spread on tho.radii to
pick up the vibrations from
a captive.
Drugs radically interfere
with this behaviour. Trans-
quillisers made them spin
less often. The webs are
. smaller, and lighter, with,
less thread and fewer turns
and radii — which would
make them less efficient for
catching flies.
Under relatively high,*
“stimulating’ doses of ’ dm-
phetamlne, the spiders tried
to build webs at their nor-
mal frequency vbut the result
was •“highly irregular and
unstructured.1’ The webs lost
their orbital. shape, lqoked
random*-In- construction, ..and
were? ineffective as- traps; {■
• ?rHighS ‘LSD^-* doses v> oom|
pletely disrupted web bulldfl
ing. Some spiders stoppe
spinning altogether. . Higl
but less Incapacitating doses
produced very complex
&h r e e-dimensional webs
appeared
igTy psychedelic.
Dr Witt is still uncertain
how far his results apply to
human beings. ‘
He1 has proved that .drugs
disrupt fm activity essential
to life in. spiders. But it
could be argued that we al-
ready know as much from
similar v experiments with
•rats.
It is debatable where spi-
ders come in; the hierarchy
of ‘human sentiment. How-
ever, scientific 1 Interest in
’this, field appears to be at a
low ebb, so there Is -little
likelihood of provocation
among spider lovers.
I Joho, .Ezar.d
But after feeding the drugs to
fnis spiders and analyzing their
webs, jsife Witt concludes that
mescaline primarily affects the
muscle”*and psilocybin the brain.
He said he tested flM^rugs on
people but too
»any subjective responses to iso-
late’- a pure drug reaction.
Some^^^^ii^mhe Nationen
Aeronautics and Space Administra-
tion heard about |r; Witt’s re-
search and became very interested
in it. This interest, sparked by the
suggestion of a student in a NASA
sponsored contest, has resulted in
a research project involyipj| spi-
ders to be conducted on^SJkylab’s
second tript into’ space lateSgihis
summer.
The-object* oft thpjffiperjment’,*
says Dr) Witt, is/riotttpftest drugs?;
but* t^ltestVtr^stress^ of.Wacll
travel on behavior of living beings’
as measured
The spiders to be ^stedylhCtfig
experiment, known as ED-52{j are
the same type used by
in his behavior and drug experil
ments. Sometfiffiaago he forward-
ed his computer cards toppl|A so
that they: could be adapted wm use
by the space agency, tjafeeiiife on
:lfiaU^SA|^mmmma^tftreadw
been made and the print-outs sent
invol&l^as^oM
ment—i n ^IfilTcasefzerbgravitv—
does to web geometry.
some reaaTffiMMt^-^ffeGlBat
the strange space envunffiment
has on the fe»ayl^6M^|fwmg
organism,” P’^m^iTKsa^^
The spiders
space in ä small box and astsrom
as possible MM be ‘‘pjadedo^
separate cages containing Jights,
and DhotograffiiBBiMpieMy
While in flight,be
fed food
nauts. The exper^rent^wil^be car-
ried out the second weekToMEi
flight and the^^BH^ the
spjders-[guild (if they build *anyj
webs at all) will |be. photographed
and B^^SSSyi^piWF^rth.
Here, be ,mee^i|| com-
puter-analyzed and coiiiared with
Ijearth we^s|g^ Dr.[^i¥Md; de-
termine if changes in web-building
have td|p^B9in space travel.
t Accordij)g|^iaWWil|. the spi-
ders themselves will not be
brought back to earlp but will
probably die jraglpace. This, he be
Eleves, wilfresult in a less-effectivt|
experiment that is incon-:;
Hisive ia somiwK^
H&’We need to determine if there!
are changes which ar^ irreversible!
and the effect of long-term; space!
travel on web building. I’m hoping
that NASA wh change its mind
and bring our spiders back t#
earth,” he said>: I
At any rate, spiders like Arl
will be ap|prd Skylab’s next space
mission and the webs they do, of
do not spin, will provide us witi
some meaningful data on the e€.
fects of space travel on living of
ganisms.
Who said spiders can’t go tf
the moon?