Good morning.
Today’s forecast calls for occasional rain and a high temperature of sixty degrees.
In the city today, there’s a Community Development Authority meeting at 4:30 p.m. The agenda for that meeting is available online.
Perhaps, just perhaps, you’ve been wondering how tarantulas can cling to smooth surfaces. If you have, then Wired has the answer in a post entitled, “Silk-Oozing Feet Give Tarantulas a Gravity-Defying Grip.” Dave Mosher writes that
Tarantulas are too heavy to stick to glass, yet the largest spiders in the world regularly seem to defy physics.
The trick: Dozens of silk-oozing spigots on their feet spin near-invisible safety lines, keeping the colossal spiders stuck wherever they please.
“No one has ever accurately described these structures before,” said neurobiologist F. Claire Rind of Newcastle University in England, leader of a June 1 Journal of Experimental Biology study of the spigots. “We’re certain they’re playing a big role in preventing [tarantulas] from sliding down vertical surfaces.”
Proof?
Here’s a video of a tarantula doing its stuff: