Spider web construction gallery (Samuel Zschoke)
We already knew that the construction of a spider web is an intricate and beautiful process, but Dr. Samuel Zschokke, Senior Lecturer at Universität Basel, takes it one farther by diagramming the actual construction phases and materials of spider webs. And he does this in a most ingenious way:

the general idea was to have the spider build a web in front of a video camera connected a image scanning device (to detect the spider in the picture) which in turn was connected to a computer (to record the spider's positions).

The effects are quite stunning, and the trivia is awesome (for instance, did you know that most spiders only take an hour to build a web that may last for one or two days, while Cyrtophora citricola takes several nights to build a web which may then last for a couple of weeks? And what a web it is!)
- posted by frank crist @ 2:43 PM