Science is a great thing. According to the dictionary definition, science is “the systematic and critical study of phenomena and the relationships between them”. In addition, science deals with the “rational acquisition of new knowledge”.
Rice University in Texas has now done science and found out that if you inject compressed air into a dead spider, you can use it to lift objects. With a spider pierced on the end of a medical syringe, you could in principle, for example, serve sugar cubes in coffee.
When reading the research, you get the feeling that the idea was probably conceived in the morning while drunk at three alcohol levels. All the same, the experiment itself is carried out in a scientifically sound manner and the research article is peer-reviewed. You can read it Advanced Science – from the scientific publication.
We learn so the following. A spider is very different in structure from a human. It basically moves with fluid pressure, i.e. hydraulically.
With its muscles, the spider can only bend its limbs. If the spider wants to straighten its limbs, it has to increase the blood pressure in its limbs. It can regulate this.
But when the spider dies, the flexor muscles pull its limbs together when there is no more fluid pressure to extend them.
The researchers realized this and wondered if they could simply pump air into a dead spider with a medical syringe and thereby make its limbs flex and extend in a controlled manner. It worked.
The syringe was attached to the spider airtight with glue, and by squeezing this syringe, the researchers managed to pick up various small objects from the spider’s carcass. So the spider acted as a kind of gentle robot crane. It was used to pick out, for example, parts of a small circuit.
Single the spider web took about a thousand lifts before it started to fray. The researchers see that a dead spider would be a more environmentally friendly solution for picking up small things than, for example, tweezers.
“This is completely biodegradable,” praises the assistant professor Daniel Preston his group’s invention. The group consisted of graduate students in mechanical engineering.
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