![]() If the vulnerability is patched, the worm is rendered useless. Harnessing disorder: onychophorans use highly unstructured proteins, not silks, for prey capture Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277 (1698), 3255-3263 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010. Worms are designed based on the vulnerability of the system. Hi, Im Tim Holman.I built the useless web in 2012, while locked up inside during a hurricane. ![]() Haritos, V., Niranjane, A., Weisman, S., Trueman, H., Sriskantha, A., & Sutherland, T. First record of an onychophoran (Onychophora, Peripatidae) feeding on a theraphosid spider (Araneae, Theraphosidae) Journal of Arachnology, 37 (1), 116-117 DOI: 10.1636/ST08-20.1 This website is pointless but has startled a lot of people the first time they saw it. ![]() Video Clip: From Life in the Undergrowth.ĭias, S., & Lo-Man-Hung, N. However, if you shake it vigorously, you will be met with flashing lights. This all happens in moments – blink and you will miss it – and it makes me glad that there aren’t any giant, human-eating velvet worms around. Now exposed to the air, the goop loses water and the threads start to become a strong, solid net, by which time the velvet worm has already set to work with its pincer-like jaws. Worm was edited to include a hyperlink to a. The Useless Web Worm / Helps you waste your time by taking you to countless random websites that are mildly entertaining, but completely useless. This slime spreads quickly over the target – especially since the gak contains specific elements that allow it to stick to the waxy exoskeletons of insects – and as the prey struggles it draws slime threads around itself. web pages to be created and edited using a common web browser. Once the velvet worm detects prey, it shoots the protein-laden goo onto its victim. The paper by Haritos’ team breaks it down like this. (I would direct you to Wikipedia for more about each, but the pages for these organic compounds are useless unless you already have a doctorate in biochemistry.) This composition seemed to indicate that the velvet worms created a silk or collagen facsimile, but a study published by Victoria Haritos and colleagues last year showed something different. Studies of the slime itself showed that it was about 90% water, and about 5% of the rest was a mix of proteins rich in the amino acids proline, glycine, and hydroxyproline. Then again, it could be some kind of silk-slime combination functionally similar to what some spiders use. Perhaps the sticky stuff is a primitive version of silk, or maybe it’s a solution filled with collagen fibers. (Waste not, want not.) How the hell does that work?Ī few different slime recipes have been proposed. The slime spurts out as a fluid, but then solidifies into a web which is consumed along with the velvet worm’s hapless victim. For decades, naturalists have been puzzled by the goo velvet worms shoot from their modified legs. Scientists have been trying to pick up a few lessons from velvet worms, too, specifically regarding how these soft-bodied predators ensnare their prey.
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