Spiderwebs as a means of determining the relative toxicity level

[fayt]

In 1995 a group of NASA scientists experimented with drugs, literally. They studied the effects that various legal and illegal drugs have on house spiders, and specifically on the way they weave their webs. The results are both surprising and... not.

The spider that was high on marijuana did a fair job weaving, but then got bored or distracted and didn't finish. The one on speed went really fast, of course, but without much awareness of the overall picture: it left large gaps. The acid-trippy spider wove a psychedelic, symmetrical web which was very pretty but not great at catching bugs.

And that brings us to caffeine. Wow. As I sit here typing, a large cup of coffee beside my laptop, I, well, I don't really want it anymore.

The NASA scientists suggested the possibility of analyzing the periodic structure of the spiderwebs (or lack thereof) as a means of determining the relative toxicity levels of drugs. They do not seem to have continued down that road, however; one obstacle may have been the difficulty of extrapolating a given drug's toxicity to humans from its toxicity to spiders. Though similarities between effects on the two species do seem to exist, I'm not sure caffeine makes me feel quite like THAT. In fact, if I wove spiderwebs, that one would probably be pre-morning-cup-of-coffee.

Such questions as what the research had to do with space shuttles or Mars rovers, where the scientists got the drugs, and what happened to the spiders later unfortunately cannot be answered here. The relevant NASA briefs are cited by other academic papers and New Scientist Magazine , but aren't themselves published on the web. The world wide one, that is.

Source: newscientist.com