Yesterday, as I lowered myself into Lake Dunmore for an early morning swim, I noticed, in a corner brace of the aluminum dock, just above the water, a remarkably complex spider’s web. It was a quarter-circle design, about 10” in diameter, a construct of beautiful symmetry and jeweler’s detail. The spider who had spun it was nowhere in sight, nor had it apparently caught anything. It must have been a night’s work, for I hadn’t noticed it the previous afternoon, and like most arachnid constructions, it seemed extravagant for its purpose.
Even as I was admiring the web’s complex design, I was struck even more by the vulnerability of its placement. The lowest of the web’s strands were no more than a few inches above the surface of the lake, and it seemed more than likely that it would be swamped by the wake of the next passing motorboat. And what exactly did the spider think it would trap so near the water?
I swam out to the raft, and as I prepared to climb the ladder up onto the platform, I noticed several more spider webs. One was a stunning, complete, orb-weaver web strung between two of the ladder’s flat wooden rungs. Like those I had observed on the aluminum dock, this one was also built just above the water surface. But its presence raised a more intriguing question, namely, how did the spider get out to the raft? The answer, of course, is that it was one of countless spiderlings sailing in the wind that day on their spun threads of gossamer.
But this in turn raised even more questions: how many gossamer-borne spiderlings drown in the wide expanse of the lake for every one that makes it to the raft? And of those who
do make it, how many find a food source there? And finally, given that any spider on the raft wouldn’t have the option of migrating back to land, how many starve on their carefully-constructed webs? As with so many of her creatures, nature’s primary strategy for survival is simply fertility.
Even as I was casually entertaining these questions about spider webs, I knew I was deliberately avoiding the overarching question they pose. It’s the question that has always been the biggest stumbling block for me on the road to complete and unreserved acceptance of the Darwinian theory of evolution, namely: How did such a thing as a spider web ever evolve? There is nothing else like it in nature. In fact, spider webs seem to contradict or undermine several of the truisms made about nature. Take the common assertion that states, “There are no straight lines in nature.” Really? I doubt if I could draw anything as straight as, say, the radiating spokes on the wheel of an orb-weaver’s web. It is as if every spider were given a miniscule erector set at birth.
But an even greater mystery is, How did spider webs evolve in the first place? What could possibly be the “missing link” between present day spider webs and their evolutionary predecessors? What was the intermediate form of the spider’s silk spinnerets that are unique in nature? Who built the laboratory in which the strong-as-steel spider silk was first concocted? One has to ask, If spider webs did not exist, would we have been able to invent them?
Or, as William Blake might have put it: Spider, spider, oh so white/ In the early morning light,/ What immortal hand or eye/ Could frame thy stunning symmetry?
