The Insect World

Author: Fabre
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-03-01
Features: The story of the colorful ribbon orb-weaver's clever trap begins with the misdeeds of clever people, which inevitably involves the trick of birdcatching. With some threads, a few stakes, and four poles, it's enough to stretch two yellowish nets left and right on an open space. The birdcatcher hides in a small hut among the bushes, waiting for the right moment. As soon as the opportunity arises, he pulls the long string in his hand, and the two nets fall with a "whoosh," like Venetian blinds, trapping the birds inside. To lure the birds, he also sets up cages on the open ground, filled with various tiny, chirping birds. These birds, upon hearing their kind flying in from afar, chirp eagerly, calling out, "Come quickly, come quickly! Wait for me, wait for me!" The most vocal of these birds, Sambe (transliteration), hops and flutters, beating its wings as if it were free, but in reality, it's tied to a stake like a prisoner. It chirps and struggles until it finally collapses from exhaustion, unwilling to waste any more effort. Yet the birdcatcher always finds ways to torment it without stepping out of his hut. All he needs to do is pull a long thread attached to a small pulley, and the bird will fly up and then fall again. Each tug makes the bird fly once. On a warm autumn morning, the birdcatcher waits and waits. Suddenly, there's a commotion in the cages. Sparrows chirp loudly, "They're here! They're here! Pick! Pick!" Something faint appears in the sky. It's Sambe! Quick, they're here! These fools, they rush headfirst into the ground filled with traps. The hidden birdcatcher swiftly pulls the string, encircling them from all sides, and all the birds fall into the nets. Human blood still runs with beastly instincts. The birdcatcher always starts slaughtering eagerly. He presses his thumb against the heart of his prey, suffocating them, then opens their heads, threads their nostrils with string, and sells them in bundles of twelve at the market. Oh, those poor little birds! When it comes to this kind of eerie cunning, the garden spider is no less clever than the hunters. If you observe its exquisite spiderweb with patience, you'll find its intelligence surpasses even that of humans. To catch a few headless flies, it has honed such skillful and perfect techniques! No other animal in the world excels at satisfying its hunger with such ingenuity and creativity. If you read the description below and think about it carefully, you too will, like me, be filled with admiration.
In terms of color, this garden spider is one of the most beautiful among southern spiders. On its plump abdomen, there's a chestnut-sized swelling, a sturdy repository for spider silk, marked with alternating bands of yellow, black, and silver, like a colorful belt, hence its nickname, the colorful ribbon orb-weaver. Around its round, plump abdomen, eight long legs extend outward, like spokes radiating from a hub, each leg adorned with concentric circles of varying shades of brown. The colorful ribbon orb-weaver is not picky about its diet. As long as it can find a spot to set up its web, it can make a home anywhere there are grasshoppers hopping, flies circling, dragonflies dancing, or butterflies fluttering. Since there are more insects by the stream, it usually prefers to stretch its web across the water, weaving it between the reeds on both banks. Sometimes, it also comes to the grassy slopes where grasshoppers love to roam, effortlessly spinning a web among the evergreen bushes. Its hunting weapon is a large, vertical web with irregular edges, as the terrain varies, but it is anchored to nearby branches with several tie points.
First, let's see how the silk used to build this structure is obtained. For the entire day, the spider lady curls up in the juniper bushes. Around 8 o'clock at night, she begins to emerge from her hiding place, walking in a solemn manner toward the treetops. At this supreme position, she sits and surveys the terrain, contemplating how to lay out this aerial map. She must consider the weather—whether it will rain at night. Suddenly, all eight of her legs spread out, and she hangs in the air, suspended by a thread drawn from her spinneret. Like a ropemaker pulling from a while stepping back, the garden spider draws its silk using the force of gravity. It slowly stretches this living plummet line. With my lantern, I clearly see the "plummet" but not the silk. At first glance, it seems as if this plump spider has appeared out of thin air in the midair, sprawled on all fours, with nothing above or below. When it reaches a height of about two inches from the ground, it suddenly stops, and its spinneret stops spinning. It turns around, grabs the silk it just spun, and climbs back up, continuing to weave as it goes. But this time, since its weight no longer helps, it must use another method to draw the silk: its two hind legs stretch out to the sides, quickly pulling a thread from the repository, and then immediately discarding it. Finally, it returns to the starting point, about six feet away at the treetop. By then, it has a double-stranded line, the two strands forming a loop, loosely floating in the air. It finds a comfortable spot, ties the end of the line to itself, and then waits for the other end to be blown by the wind to a nearby branch. It waits to the left and the right, but nothing happens. It hasn't lost patience, but I, the onlooker, have become somewhat impatient, so I lend a little help. I pick up the floating loop with a stalk of wheat and place it on a moderately tall, thin branch. The pedestrian bridge I've built seems to suit the spider's taste. When it feels the line is fixed, it begins to run back and forth along the cable, adding a strand with each trip. In fact, whether I intervene or not, it will eventually complete this crucial part of the "aerial cableway"—the framework of the spiderweb. I call it a cableway because of its structure, though this cable is incredibly thin. At first glance, it looks like a single thread; but upon closer inspection, you'll see that the ends of the thread branch out like flowers, with as many divisions as the number of times it twists. These branched threads are attached to different points, making the ends even more unbreakable. This cable is much stronger than any other part of the project and can last for a long time. After a night of hunting, the spiderweb is usually torn and tattered, and it must be rebuilt by dusk the next day. The spider cleans up the remnants of the old web, discarding everything except this cable, which it uses to hang a new web in the same place. After all the effort to set up this cable, the spider has a bridge of silk, allowing it to freely move between the oceans of leaves on both sides. Each time it slides down a short distance from the cable, it chooses a different landing spot and then climbs back along the newly spun silk. In this way, the cable is crisscrossed with diagonal lines, connecting it to the branches and then used to stretch other diagonal lines in different directions. When there are enough intersecting lines for its needs, the spider no longer relies on falling to draw the silk. It climbs from one webline to another, pulling out silk with its hind legs as it goes. This creates a series of straight lines, arranged in a haphazard manner, except that they all remain within a roughly vertical plane. This is a very irregular polygon, yet the spiderweb to be woven within it is a perfectly exquisite masterpiece. From the center of the web to its edges, there's a large, opaque Z-shaped band. This is the garden spider's trademark, like an artist proudly signing their initials on a work of art. "()," it says, as it weaves for the last time. P1-5