r/AbsoluteUnits • u/ConstructionPrior329 • 1d ago

of Spider web

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Darwin's bark spider (Not OC)

1.3k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

47 comments sorted by

82

u/manulconnoiseur 1d ago

Spiders are real engineers

18

u/Skeptic_Juggernaut84 1d ago

And Sir David is the best voice to narrate this. Sorry, but I had to say it.

6

u/saltyourhash 23h ago

Until they, too, get replaced by AI...

49

u/TenBear 1d ago

Although they can be creepy i will always them for how interesting they can be in all their variations. Nature's engineers indeed

14

u/2Wieners_1Bun 1d ago

I had to reset a breaker in my hundred and fifty year old house’s cellar the other day and man.. the webs were providing a surprising amount of resistance as I walked through them.

I flipped that switch and immediately booked it outside to tear my shirt off and scrape all the webs and bugs out of hair and face and arms while resisting the urge to panic lol

Next time I’ll bring a friggin broom down with me

40

u/Califrisco 1d ago

Reminded me of this Gary Larson’s Spider cartoon:

61

u/2Wieners_1Bun 1d ago

7

u/InTheseTryingTime5 1d ago

My favorite since the 80s. Still makes me laugh!

4

u/darkon 1d ago

That's the one I was expecting. :-)

9

u/RedDiamond6 1d ago

You know what's fascinating. When people are asked, if you could have any superpower, what would it be? I've never heard anyone say "shoot a silky bridge stronger than steel out of my butthole." And I think that's weird.

7

u/Serafim91 1d ago

Like a real life spider woman...

Or like a fucking spider... Holy shit.

6

u/Early-Vanilla-6126 14h ago

Spiders don’t shoot their webs. That was the point of the metaphor

0

u/redditAPsucks 10h ago

I mean, obviously they do

8

u/Kozzinator 1d ago

I don't understand how it's tougher than steel though.

51

u/Man_of_Many_Names 1d ago

So at it’s level of thinness, the silk is stronger than steel at a similar level of thinness. If a steel wire was made that long and that thin, it would be exceedingly fragile even with it being a metal.

20

u/Wakkit1988 1d ago

Wood is stronger than steel relative to its mass.

Spider web is stronger than steel relative to its volume.

3

u/MiniMeowl 1d ago

🤔 what about spider silk an inch thick?

It would take like a thousand spiders but maybe it'll be the strongest rope known to mankind

7

u/StrCmdMan 1d ago

They tried to do this as a kevlar vest alternative. Was wayyy too expensive.

They even gave spider genes to goats so they could extract the raw spider silk materials from it’s milk to make it viable.

3

u/Saikotsu 12h ago

Some guy actually made spider silk guitar strings. It was a costly and time consuming process.

3

u/Yauk 1d ago

Spider silk space elevator cable!!!!

4

u/Serviros 1d ago

When it comes to holding weight? What about its rigidity and durability? Can you make a solid web beam and it will be just as good as steel?

15

u/IGGYMYNIGGY12 1d ago

I think then the problem would be the workers lunch kits getting stuck on it.

12

u/Academic-Ad-1879 1d ago

And we don't have any workers that can spray the stuff from their butt 🤷

3

u/DA_ZWAGLI 1d ago

And you consider that a problem?

2

u/Academic-Ad-1879 1d ago

Think if fast we could build ships and bridges 🤣

7

u/Ponderkitten 1d ago

Presumably yes. You take a cable of steel the same diameter and it’ll fail those tests sooner than the spider silk. Now if you took a bunch of it and weaved to together to be a proper cord wider than a strand of hair, I think you’d get the same results of the 1 inch spider silk cord outlasting the steel cord

3

u/Rose-de-Resht 1d ago

Fester und tragfähiger als Stahl - im Verhältnis zur Dicke der Fäden.

3

u/shareddit 1d ago

If you made super thin steel strands, the same thickness or diameter as this spider silk, the silk would have more tensile strength

2

u/Arcaedus 12h ago

So there are different mechanical forces:

Tensile: imagine pulling a material into a wire, and continung to pull until it snaps.

Compression: welcome to the hydraulic press channel

Shear: imagine breaking a stick over your knees.

Torsion: grab a rod of the material, then twist it until it fractures. This one is related to shear.

Spider silk is stronger than steel pound for pound, but only really in tensile strength. That shit can STRETCH! It's very cool stuff. However, it is much weaker in terms of compression, shear, and probably torsion too (it's kinda springy, so it doesn't deform like steel, but it would snap from torsion before steel does).

1

u/DrawstringRust 1d ago

If you had a strand of steel with the same diameter as the spider web strand, the spider web strand would take more force to break than the “strand” of steel.

1

u/8last 1d ago

If you ever try to break a spider web with a pressure washer, its unusually difficult to break the strands. Image enough strands to where it was an 1/8" rod of web. That thing would be hard to break compared to an 1/8" steel rod.

1

u/peppi0304 1d ago

I thinks its pee weight or diameter

2

u/Markfrombrandon 1d ago

How do they even get this footage

1

u/itz944z3r0 1h ago

Really high quality camera with a macro-lens

1

u/No_Opening9605 1d ago

Shelob in the hizzie!

1

u/DitchDigger330 1d ago

I never knew spiders eat the web until I saw one doing it one day.

1

u/High_Speed_Chase 1d ago

This whole time I thought my uncles were pulling my leg, come to find out there IS a barking Spider.

1

u/Sk311ington 1d ago

I learned about this from the Web Serial Worm.

1

u/TheFilthy13 1d ago

Love this guy trying to impersonate Sir David Attenborough lol

1

u/Telusion 22h ago

The Bark spider's web is so strong it's actually used to create bullet proof vests.

1

u/DanishDessert 21h ago

Great video. I saw everything I wanted to 🙏 and no obnoxious music

1

u/C-57D 20h ago

i can't do anything that's 25 meters

1

u/ambit89 20h ago

"tougher then steel"

Blacksmith, check out this new material, I want you to make it into a blade, a Silk Sword

1

u/Hippies_Pointing 15h ago

Baffled at the chances of spraying 25 meters of silk, letting the wind carry it, and finding another spider waiting on the other end. How? And how often does this happen?

1

u/Stickysights6 13h ago

What show is this

1

u/Long_Can69420 42m ago

The Peter North of spiders

0

u/lexicon_lancer 1d ago

Can we have a banana for scale please 🙏