Spider Silk – Leslie Brunetta & Catherine L. Craig *****

Somewhere in Spider Silk the authors describe one of the first arachnids coming out of the sea onto the land around 400 million years ago. There was little vegetation but for 150 million years these trigonotarbids persisted. They had eight legs and they looked very much like today’s spiders, but with one very important difference: they made no silk.

Silk-making arachnids, attercops, arrived, perhaps, around 20 million years later, but it was not until 290 million years ago that the first arachnids with spinnerets arrived on the scene. These were called mesotheles and 90 species survive to this day. Their mating ritual involves limbo dancing. Some of them lay trip wires. They live in burrows lined with silk and with silken trap doors, and from these they lie in wait…

The mygalomorphae, which arrived 50 millions years later, are hairy and rather large (the tarantula is an example) and unlike the mesotheles, have spinnerets at the end of their abdomen which gives them greater flexibility in web design. Some of them are lethally amorous: interrupt the hour-long clinch of the Sydney Funnelweb at your peril. A bite from one of these little beauties can cause an autonomic storm that can be fatal in the vulnerable.

The next development came with the araneomorphs. These are the most successful arachnids in the world today. They outnumber the mesotheles and mygalomorphs by fourteen to one, and are the silk connoisseurs. All arachnids produce different sorts of silk, but the silk of araneomorphs is made to order. It can be superstrong, superstretchy, supersticky or superfluffy according to requirements – and scientists would love to emulate it.

136 million years ago the araneoidea superfamily came up with the spider trade-mark: the orb. However, since this turned out to have a major design flaw, this is under further development by firm arachnid today.

The book makes fascinating reading with plenty of quirky spider facts. The origin, genetics and molecular structure of the silk is assessed and used to explain the properties, and all of this then set in the context of the web and the behaviour of the spider. Along the way it takes the opportunity to discuss aspects of basic genetics, developmental evolutionary theory and evolution itself. In fact, its description of the finer points of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and the explanation of how it differed from earlier theory was the best I’ve ever read. It will give you a new appreciation of the wild life of your home, and give you an excellent excuse not to dust.

Hardback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Clare Dudman

Comments

The Language of Mathematics - Raúl Rojas ***

One of the biggest developments in the history of maths was moving from describing relationships and functions with words to using symbols. This interesting little book traces the origins of a whole range of symbols from those familiar to all, to the more obscure squiggles used in logic and elsewhere. On the whole Raúl Rojas does a good job of filling in some historical detail, if in what is generally a fairly dry fashion. We get to trace what was often a bumpy path as different symbols were employed (particularly, for example, for division and multiplication, where several still remain in use), but usually, gradually, standards were adopted. This feels better as a reference, to dip into if you want to find out about a specific symbol, rather than an interesting end to end read. Rojas tells us the sections are designed to be read in any order, which means that there is some overlap of text - it feels more like a collection of short essays or blog posts that he couldn't be bothered ...

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that ‘Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...

Ctrl+Alt+Chaos - Joe Tidy ****

Anyone like me with a background in programming is likely to be fascinated (if horrified) by books that present stories of hacking and other destructive work mostly by young males, some of whom have remarkable abilities with code, but use it for unpleasant purposes. I remember reading Clifford Stoll's 1990 book The Cuckoo's Egg about the first ever network worm (the 1988 ARPANet worm, which accidentally did more damage than was intended) - the book is so engraved in my mind I could still remember who the author was decades later. This is very much in the same vein, but brings the story into the true internet age. Joe Tidy gives us real insights into the often-teen hacking gangs, many with members from the US and UK, who have caused online chaos and real harm. These attacks seem to have mostly started as pranks, but have moved into financial extortion and attempts to destroy others' lives through doxing, swatting (sending false messages to the police resulting in a SWAT te...

Search This Blog