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This is what a spiderweb sounds like.
From communication to construction, spiderwebs may offer an
orchestra of information, says Markus Buehler, engineering
professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has
been using artificial intelligence to study them.
"Spiders utilize vibrations as a way to communicate with the
environment, with other spiders," he said. "We have recorded
these vibrations from spiders and used artificial intelligence
to learn these vibrational patterns and associate them with
certain actions, basically learning the spider's language."
Buehler and his team of researchers created 3D models of
spiderwebs when the arachnids were doing different things - such
as construction, repair, hunting and feeding. They then listened
for patterns in the spider signals and recreated the sounds
using computers and mathematical algorithms.
"Spiders are a whole different animal," said Buehler. "What they
see or sense isn't actually audible or visible to the human eye
or the human ear. And so by transposing it, we begin to
experience that."
Buehler hopes his team's work could enable humans to understand
the language of a spider and one day communicate with them.
"The melodies are really the kind of relationships that the
spider would also experience. And so we can begin to feel a
little bit like a spider in that way," Buehler said.
There are more than 47,000 species of spiders, and all spin silk
webs to provide housing and catch food. Scientists say the silk
from a spiderweb is five times stronger than steel.
The living structure of a spiderweb could lead to innovations in
construction, maintenance and repair, Buehler said.
"We can imagine creating a synthetic system that would mimic
what the spider does in sensing the web, repairing the web," he
said.
(Reporting by Angela Moore; Editing by Karishma Singh)
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