Thursday 22 November 2012

Spider Intelligence

Have you ever seen a Pomeranian malt for summer?  The under layer of fur is thick and fluffy so it comes off in chunks.  We have been finding little black chunks of Bo's fur every where.  Yes I needed to tell you this before I go into my story about an intelligent spider, which is beginning now.

I have an ice-cream container on the floor in my bedroom (don't ask).  Until a week ago it was empty.  A small spider (about the size of a thumb nail) took up residence in the container.  I remember wondering how on earth it was going to get something to eat in there. 

Every morning I would get up and see the little spider sitting in its favourite corner on the far side of the container.

About two days ago I noticed some of Bo's fluff sitting in the spiders favourite corner and he had moved to the centre, that is until last night.

Just before I went to bed I glanced in at my roomie.  I realised that the spider had not stayed in the container by choice but that it was trapped.  The sides were too slippery for it to cling to.  I then noticed that it was making a web and thought, oh ok it is fine, its not trapped. As I watched it cross it's web to hover in it's favourite corner above the fluff.

If I knew then what I know now I would have wished for one of those video cameras to record what it did all night.

You see it had been hatching an escape plan.  It needed the fluff to raise it up off the bottom of the container and start a web.  It would then pull the fluff up each successive web layer (I am only surmising here) until it had reached the top (which also happened to be the diagonally opposite corner).  With it's silken web strings attached to the fluff, it flung the fluff over the edge (like Rapunzel's hair) and made it's escape. 

This is what I woke up to this morning.  The corner where the light is reflecting on the inside of the container is where the fluff was when I went to bed.  So proud of my little spider.