Spiders listen to the vibrations of their webs to gain information about their surroundings and possibly their next meal or lover.
Spider webs give off frequencies in a similar way to a guitar string, a University of Oxford news release reported.
The researchers made their discovery by firing bullets and lasers at spider silk to see how it affected their vibrations. They found the silk could be turned into a large variety of "harmonics."
The findings could help inspire man-made devices such as light-weight sensors.
"Most spiders have poor eyesight and rely almost exclusively on the vibration of the silk in their web for sensory information," Beth Mortimer of the Oxford Silk Group at Oxford University, who led the research, said in the news release. "The sound of silk can tell them what type of meal is entangled in their net and about the intentions and quality of a prospective mate. By plucking the silk like a guitar string and listening to the 'echoes' the spider can also assess the condition of its web."
Spiders "turn" their silk in order to control its properties. In order to look at these "sonic" properties the researchers employed the use of ultra-high-speed-cameras
"The fact that spiders can receive these nanometre vibrations with organs on each of their legs, called slit sensillae, really exemplifies the impact of our research about silk properties found in our study," Doctor Shira Gordon of the University of Strathclyde, an author involved in this research, said in the news release.
"These findings further demonstrate the outstanding properties of many spider silks that are able to combine exceptional toughness with the ability to transfer delicate information," Professor Fritz Vollrath of the Oxford Silk Group at Oxford University, an author of the paper, said in the news release. "These are traits that would be very useful in light-weight engineering and might lead to novel, built-in 'intelligent' sensors and actuators."
Spiders could even work to create webs that "sound right," Mortimer suggested.
