#HTE
Spiders on Different Drugs Spin Different Types of Web Patterns
In 1948, Swiss zoologist H.M. Peters was studying how spiders build their webs. But he kept falling asleep during the observation process, as spiders typically build their webs nocturnally. Frustrated, he asked colleague Peter N. Witt if there was something Witt could give the spiders that would make them build webs earlier in the day.
Witt was a pharmacologist. So he started giving the spiders psychoactive drugs dissolved in droplets of water, one drug per spider.
The drugs didn’t change the spider’s build schedules; they stubbornly stuck to their 2am to 5am work hours. But they did drastically influence the spiders’ architecture skills. According to Priceonomics,
Spiders dosed with sleeping drugs became “very drowsy,” skipped spinning the longest, most challenging radial threads (those on the outer corners of the frame), and left huge gaps in their webs; Benzedrine caused the spiders to spin a spiral “that zig-zagged like an unsteady walker” and induced the inability to locate precise spots within the web; marijuana made the insects omit altogether the inner part of the web; scopolamine, which has hallucinogenic effects in humans, destroyed the spiders’ sense of direction altogether.
NASA repeated the experiment in 1995 and found much the same thing: Spiders on drugs tend not to finish their webs, and depending on which drug they’re on, make some odd design choices.
We would next like to see this test administered to modern-day starchitects. The hope is that some of them may design buildings that are actually rectilinear.
http://www.core77.com/posts/70719/Spiders-on-Different-Drugs-Spin-Different-Types-of-Web-Patterns