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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JustKim" data-source="post: 4608570" data-attributes="member: 5478"><p>NO. Webbing is not intrinsically sticky! The stickiness of a capture web is due to a glue applied from a spider's aggregate gland, which is found only in orb weavers. Even in an orb weaver's capture web, however, [SIZE="-2"]not every silk strand is adhesive. The orb weaver uses only enough adhesive to snare a meal-sized insect and lets the elasticity of the webbing do the rest tangling up the insect. The matrix of adhesive application is common to all spiders of a species and what's fascinating is that the pattern of adhesive is also designed to reflect ultraviolet light in a way that resembles a flower when seen through the eyes of an insect. Since humans cannot perceive ultraviolet light, the web doesn't resemble anything to us, but they are truly amazing and wonders of evolution that we still don't fully understand and just recently there was a story on BBC you might have seen about a prehistoric missing link spider previously thought to have been the first orb weaver, which is very exciting but what's also interesting is that it may have used its silk as a drag line, which begs the question of why modern species of dragline spiders have coterminously evolved spinnerets capable of bla bla bla bla bla bla[/SIZE]</p></blockquote><p></p>