Gripping stuff: Spiders spin sticky silk with their feet

0 Comments | AFP, September, 2006

PARIS (AFP) — Tarantulas secrete sticky silk from their feet to help them adhere to shiny surfaces, German scientists have learned. Spiders are already known to have two mechanisms that give them their uncanny ability to walk upside or cling to smooth vertical surfaces. One is the use of thousands of tiny hairs that generate a weak electrical bond, called the van der Waals forces, with the surface.

Another is tiny claws that lock onto rough surfaces. But scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart have now found -- in tarantulas, at least -- a third gripping tool: microscopic nozzle-like structures on their feet that secrete a viscous silk-like filament. The team carried out their research with zebra tarantulas (Aphonopelma seemanni) from Costa...