Carlos Patrickson, age 9, of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, for his question:

HOW DO SPIDERS MAKE WEBS?

Arachnidia is the scientific name for the more than 60,000 different species of spiders and their close relatives. The name came from Greek mythology where a girl named Athena bragged about her spinning and weaving skill  and was turned into a spider and condemned to go on spinning forever. Today spiders are found in all parts of the world.

Spiders, of course, are famous for their web spinning ability. The webs are used to catch insects, travel, line nests and wrap eggs.

Silk producing glands inside the abdomen are connected to external spinning organs called spinnerets. The spinnerets are fingerlike appendages that are manipulated in various ways to provide the kinds and combinations of silk for the particular web the spider is spinning. Coming out as a liquid but hardening almost immediately to form a dry line, the silk in some spiders remains sticky as a way of capturing prey.

A spider learns at a very early age to spin webs. Soon after she comes out of the silken egg sac, she is possessed by a strange wanderlust. She will climb to the top of a plant and then, after allowing the breeze to pull out long streamers from her spinnerets, she will let go and float into the air. This is called ballooning and is practiced by small spiders of all ages. With this game, she can attain great heights and fly long distances.

Spiders can trail a dragline thread wherever it goes and thus can cover plants and even buildings with silken lines. The draglines can be seen sometimes in our homes, covered with dust and lint and hanging as unkempt cobwebs.

Spider webs are fine and very strong. The average

dragline is less than one ten thousandth of an inch in diameter with some as fine as one one millionth of an inch thick.

For many years spider threads were used for cross hairlines or markers in the lenses of some optical instruments. The practice, however, isn't used today since drawn platinum wire is much more practical and easier to handle.

Different spiders spin different types of webs. The grass spider blankets grass or other plants with a sheet of webbing. The comb footed spider spins a tangle of lines in the corners of houses. Some spin orb webs that are a series of open spaces radiating outward from a central hub. On this framework of dry lines, the spider will lay down many spiral turns of sticky silk to catch flying insects.