Black Widow Spiders Had A Vital Role in WWII

I had a Black Widow in my Peavey Bandit. Weighed a ton and was loud as heck. You can see the silver dust cap in the pic:

 

Strong stuff, spider web. It is used for (archery) bow strings, and has been woven into fabric

 

While silk is pretty amazing stuff, modern synthetic fibers (like kevlar) far outperform it. IIRC, kevlar is twice as strong - just looked it up - steel wire is stronger.

Another interesting organic fiber stuff is the goop that mussels use for gluing themselves (underwater) to rocks.

Natural (or unnatural if you prefer) selection selects some cool mutations!

The strongest spider webs here are the Golden Orb webs. Bright yellow webs.

 

I've had black widow roommates and realized the ones that were out of the way and never within easy reach pretty much never moved, as far as I could tell. If I saw bug carcasses, I knew they found their good spot and were likely to stay there. If they came out into the open, they died. That only happened twice. Their webs remind me of a cotton ball that has been stretched out as far as it can. They look like they've been made by a drunk spider. I'm more worried about Hobo spiders since they have the ability to inject venom that's similar to the Recluse. Fortunately, the indoor spider known as the "Wolf" here in the NW eats widows and Hobos. Unfortunately, they like to explore, bite humans and they get quite huge.

 

I don't know if they were black widows or brown recluses.[/QUOTE]

There would have been no doubt as to what spider bit you. It had to be a recluse as their bites are painless. The widow's bite is extremely painful.

 

I got pretty desensitized to them working on a farm one year in my early 20s.

I killed maybe 1000 black widows in one afternoon removing acres of tarp from tomato fields.

Literally every square foot of the underbelly of the tarp was covered with black widow females guarding eggs.

I caught the 3 biggest females and named them and brought them places with me that summer. The biggest one ate the two slightly smaller ones and I fed her until her nest made it hard to see where she was when I opened the jar. That was when I released her.

Strange experience.

 

We don t have dangerous spiders here, but a girl in my school who lived in a house close to the river got bitten by a spider on the face. One side of the face was all swollen and blueish, like in a horror movie .