alt.building.engineering

On Wed, 05 Sep 2007 16:51:47 GMT, Rich Grise wrote:

>On Sun, 02 Sep 2007 14:58:10 -0500, skddlbyp wrote:
>
>> I noticed a leaf suspended in the air. On inspection, it was suspended
>> by two filaments, spun by a spider, I guess. One filament went up at maybe a
>> 35 degree angle degrees and five feet to a branch of one tree, and the other
>> up maybe a 60 degree 10 or 15 feet to another tree. The tree branches did
>> not touch; the distance between the two branches was the hypotenuse.
>>
>> My question is: how could a spider do this? Not to mention why?
>> I suppose it could let itself down, holding a leaf, and releasing a
>> filament. But how could it ever get a second filament up to another branch
>> of a different tree?
>>
>> I saw no web.
>
>The spider spun a filament from the upper tree, and let the wind carry
>it until the other end hit the other tree. This way, the spider could
>go from the tall tree to the other tree.
>
>The leaf was simply blowing by and got trapped on the sticky fiber, which
>by this time had been abandoned by the spider.
>
>Cheers!
>Rich
>

Are you kidding? No way, the spiders did this on purpose simply to
confuse the OP, and make (him) loose sleep!

It is a marvel of engineering, done to perfection! As I understand it
these same spiders are working on conducting filaments to allow them
to interconnect their nuclear power plants. Right now they find it
difficult to create one plant per tree.