IF YOU USED YOUR MUSCLE LIKE THE SPIDER.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 8, Issue 30, 12 April 1907, Page 2

IF YOU USED YOUR MUSCLE LIKE THE SPIDER.

SOME ASTONISHING FEATS YOU MIGHT ACCOMPLISH. * Some years ago a paragraph appeared ini the newspapers stating that a spider had caught in its web and suspended an unfortunate mouse, raising it nearly a foot from the ground, and leaving it there to slowly starve to death. The paragraph was ridiculed at the time, but since then the spider has been made the subject of a most interesting scientific investigation, in which it has been found that in physical culture, jiu-jitsu, and other sciences connected with muscular development we havs much to learn from the little insect.

It may scarcely seem fair or complimentary to say that a spider knows more than a man about weight-lifting and other feats of strength. Rut scientists have just completed a list of really astonishing things we might be.able to do if we employed our muscles with the same ingenuity as the spider does. A man could lift 9ti other men of his own weight, a total of about 17,0001 b,

Or he could "put up" an elephant weighing five tons with one hand. Or he could make a standing jump of over 30ft.

Or lie could run 100 yards in a fraction over 3sec. ’Phis means* covering tho ground faster than a mile a minute. In 1 Miiu’s "Seven Follies of Science" an ingenious explanation is given of how the spider is able to apply its strength so advantageously. The spider is furnished by nature with one of the most efficient mechanical appliances known to engineers—a strong elastic thread. That the thread is strong is wellknown, Indeed, there are few substances that will support a greater strain than the silk of the silkworm or the spider, careful experiments have shown that for equal size the strength of these fibres exceeds that of iron rods.

Hut notwithstanding its strength the spider's thread alone would be useless as a mechanical power if it were not for its elasticity. The spider lias no blocks or pulleys, and therefore it cannot cause the thread to divide up and run in different directions, but the elasticity of the thread more, than makes up for this, and renders possible the lifting of an animal much heavier than a mouse. This may require a little explanation.

Let us suppose that a child can lift a 61b. weight Ift. high, and do this 20 times a minute. Furnish him with 350 rubber bands, each capable of pulling 61b, through one foot when stretched. Let these bands be attached to a wooden platform on which stands a pair of horses weighing 2,1001 b,, or rather more than a ton, ]{ now the child will go to work and stretch these rubber bands, singly, hooking them each one up, as it is stretched, in less than 20 minutes he will have raised the pair of horses one foot. Me thus see that the elasticity of ‘the rubber bands enables the child to divide the weight of the horses into 350 pieces of 61b. each, and at the rate of a little less than one every second he lifts all those sepacate pieces I ft,, so that the child easily lifts this enormous weight. Each spider’s thread acts like one of the clastic rubber bands. Let us suppose that the mouse weighed half an ounce, and that each thread is capable of supporting a grain and a half. The spider would have to connect the mouse with the point at which it was to he suspended with 150 threads, and if the little quadruped was once swung off his foot, ho would he. powerless. By pulling successively on each thread and shortening it a little, the mouse might be raised to any height within the capacity of the building or structure i-u which the work was done.

What object the spider could have had for catching the mouse and lifting it off the ground it is difficult to see. It may have been a dread of the harm which the mouse might work, or it may have been the hope that after the captured animal had starved to death the decaying carcase would attract Hies which would furnish food for the engineer.

In a most instructive and interesting volume on “Insect Architecture,” by Honnie, a tribute is paid to the wonderful engineering ability displayed by the wonderful little spider and other insects. Long before man h'ad thought of the saw, the sawfly had used the same tool, made after the same fashion, and used in the same way, for the purpose of making slits in the branches of trees so that she might have a secure place in which to deposit her eggs. The carpenter bee, with only the tools which nature has given her, cuts a round hole, the full diameter of her body, through thick boards, and so makes a tunnel by which she can have a safe retreat, in which to raise her young. The tumble-hug, without derrick or machinery, rolls over large masses of dirt many times her own weight, and the sexton beetle will in a few hours bury beneath the ground the carcase of a comparatively large animal. All theso feats require a degree of instinct which in a reasoning creature would be called engineering skill, but none of them are as wonderful as the feats performed by the spider.—" Weekly Budget. ’’