Spiders spin ant-repellent silk

Certain spider webs send ants packing, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B that should interest anyone who has ever tried to deal with an ant invasion.As most homeowners know, ants can be relentless, marching onto property in countless numbers and feasting on anything in sight. They can squeeze through seemingly invisible nooks and crannies in walls, so imagine what it's like for spiders that live out in the open.One clever species, the Golden Orb Web Spider, deals with this potential ant problem from the outset.“We found that large Golden Orb Web Spiders add a defensive alkaloid chemical onto the silk, which stops the ants from walking onto the web when they come into contact with it,” Daiqin Li, an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore, was quoted as saying in a press release.Li and his team's discovery adds chemical defense to the already impressive properties of spider silk. In addition to its ability to deter ants, silk is unbelievably strong, elastic and adhesive.The researchers suspected Golden Orb Web Spider silk had this ant-ridding ability for one good reason: they hardly ever saw ants on the webs of these spiders. If you study spiders closely, this would get you thinking, and so they did.