Creepy-Crawly

Few of us realize that Nasa scientists (the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration) not only delve into the mysteries of the universe, but they also study eeek! spiders. Instead of Sir Walter Scott's admonition, "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive, " their latest research is about what happens to web patterns when house spiders are "stoned" on different drugs. They discovered that arachnids spun their webs in different ways based on the type of drug given.

The first photo shows a normal, drug-free spider web, but the second black and white photo shows that spiders on marijuana made a decent effort at spinning webs but appeared to lose concentration about half-way through. 

The third photo shows that spiders on benzedrine, spin energetically but lack planning and leave large holes.

Caffeine, in the fourth photo, makes spiders incapable of spinning anything more that a few threads strung together at random.

In this last photo, chloral hydrat, a common ingredient in sleeping pills, make spiders drop off before they can create a decent web.

NASA wants to continue using web-spinning spiders to test drugs, because they found the more toxic the chemical, the more deformed the webs. Spiders are beneficial in the garden, but who knew they were also beneficial in research? Have a creepy-crawly and happy Halloween!