Spiders In Space
The nephila clavipes themselves seemed to have their own little science experiment.
Spiders in space. Two golden orb spiders or nephila clavipes were flown aboard the space station in a special habitat. Nasa view large image ever since they were announced the spiders in space have been living in the limelight. Nasa astronaut cady coleman shows the spider habitat.
The orb weaver species were selected based on the symmetrical webs they weave on earth. Their first webs were chaotic and three dimensional as the spiders were not used to the lack of gravity. The habitat included two orb weaver spiders larinioides patagiatus or genus metepeira which students could view from earth to compare the feeding and web building of the spiders in space against those housed in classrooms.
As a result these two arachnids dubbed gladys and esmeralda by astronaut cady coleman are reaching celebrity status. Within a few days of being in space however they adapted to their weightlessness and made their webs with some normalcy. This allowed researchers to study the spiders web spinning practices to see if that behavior or the characteristics of the web they produced would change over time.