Related papers: Ballooning in Spiders using Multiple Silk Threads
We report on three launches of ballooning $Erigone$ spiders observed in a 0.9 m$^3$ laboratory chamber, controlled under conditions where no significant air motion was possible. These launches were elicited by vertical, downward-oriented…
We consider general aspects of the physics underlying the flight of Gossamer spiders, also known as ballooning spiders. We show that existing observations and the physics of spider silk in the presence of the Earth's static atmospheric…
Motivated by recent experimental observations of capillary-induced spooling of fibers inside droplets both in spider capture silk and in synthetic systems, we investigate the behavior of a fiber packed in a drop. Using a simplified 2D…
Spider silk is a remarkable biomaterial with exceptional stiffness, strength, and toughness stemming from a unique microstructure. While recent studies show that silk fibers exhibit plasticity, hysteresis, and recovery under cyclic loading,…
Spider dragline silk supercontracts as humidity increases, displaying large axial shortening together with a reproducible macroscopic twist. The physical origin of this torsion remains debated and is often attributed to helically arranged…
Spider dragline silk shows well-known outstanding mechanical properties. However, its sigmoidal shape of the measured stress-strain curves (i.e. the yield) can not be described by classical polymer theories and recent hierarchical chain…
Spiders' webs and gossamer threads are often paraded as paradigms for lightweight structures and outstanding polymers. Probably the most intriguing of all spider silks is the araneid capture thread, covered with tiny glycoprotein glue…
Silk is a semi-dilute solution of randomly coiled associating polypeptide chains that crystallise following the stretch-induced disruption, in the strong extensional flow of extrusion, of the solvation shell around their amino acids. We…
Spider silk possesses unique mechanical properties like large extensibility, high tensile strength, super-contractility, etc. Understanding these mechanical responses require characterization of the rheological properties of silk beyond the…
Tripod spiders are the simplest examples of arachnoid mechanisms. Their workspaces and configuration spaces are well known. For Hooke potential, we give a complete description of the Morse theory and treat the robust control of the spider.…
Statistical properties of spike trains measured from a sensory neuron in-vivo are studied experimentally and theoretically. Experiments are performed on an identified neuron in the visual system of the blowfly. It is shown that the spike…
An essential element in the web-trap architecture, the capture silk spun by ecribellate orb spiders consists of glue droplets sitting astride a silk filament. Mechanically this thread presents a mixed solid-liquid behavior unknown to date.…
Flying snakes use a unique method of aerial locomotion: they jump from tree branches, flatten their bodies and undulate through the air to produce a glide. The shape of their body cross-section during the glide plays an important role in…
In this letter, we adopt a new approach combining theoretical modeling with silk stretching measurements to explore the mystery of the structures between silkworm and spider silks, leading to the differences in mechanical response against…
An elastic layer slides on a rigid flat governed by Coulomb's friction law. We demonstrate that if the coefficient of friction is high enough, the sliding localizes within stick-slip pulses, which transform into opening waves propagating at…
Ribbons are long narrow strips possessing three distinct material length scales (thickness, width, and length) which allow them to produce unique shapes unobtainable by wires or filaments. For example when a ribbon has half a twist and is…
We study the dynamics of a flexible fiber freely moving in a three-dimensional fully-developed turbulent field and present a phenomenological theory to describe the interaction between the fiber elasticity and the turbulent flow. This…
The correlations in the motion of reptating polymers in their melt are investigated by means of kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of the three dimensional slithering snake version of the bond-fluctuation model. Surprisingly, the slithering…
We study the motion of random walkers with residence time bias between first and subsequent visits to a site, as a model for synthetic molecular walkers composed of coupled DNAzyme legs known as molecular spiders. The mechanism of the…
Saving energy and enhancing performance are secular preoccupations shared by both nature and human beings. In animal locomotion, flapping flyers or swimmers rely on the flexibility of their wings or body to passively increase their…