The art of engineering and architecture in the city’s hidden places
When you walk through the larger Danish cities, one can easily get lost in the human capabilities of architecture and engineering. Large shopping centres with beautiful architectural details stand side by side with buildings so tall, that even large trees look small. But humans are far from alone in being able to create great art. This is certainly also an ability that for example spiders possess, although their way of engineering is created by pure instinct and fine-tuned over millions of years of evolution.
When walking in the city, it is possible to see cobwebs in the bushes and trees of the gardens and parks. Some of them are nice, regular and elaborate wheel spins formed by spiders named for this type of cobweb: wheel spinners. Between these, we find, for example, the well-known cross spiders and square spiders that can be recognized by the white drawings that they have on their backs. Other webs are spun horizontally and creates the sense of a blanket, which the insects fall down onto, and a third type of cob is more tangled and resembles most of all a random collection of wires that are strung out unsystematically.
If you look closely at the few thatched houses, which you can find in the city, you might get lucky and see the spin of a kart spider. This spider hides in the straw and ensures its “home” is stable by fastening it with its spider web. At the same time, the web functions as tripwires that alert the spider to whether there is prey on the way.
Just outside of town, on grassland and in construction sites, where the grass has been allowed to grow a little higher, you may be lucky to find a web from the wasp spider. Just as the spider itself, which is unmistakable with its black and yellow stripes, there is nothing to be confused with the wasp spider's web. It is the only species to make a full zigzag stripe through the web called a stabilimentum.