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News Clippings
27 April 1995 (Daily Telegraph)
Drug-test spiders weave their way home
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
A SPIDER'S skill at spinning its web is so obviously
affected when it is under the influence of drugs that
Nasa scientists believe the creature could help them to
test the effects of chemicals.
Different drugs alter the architecture of the web spun by
a house spider in various ways, according to research
reported today in New Scientist.
Spiders on marijuana are too laid back to finish the job,
while those dosed with the sedative chloral hydrate drop
off before they can lay down more than a few silky
filaments. On an "upper", such as the
amphetamine benzedrine, the spider demonstrates great
gusto but not much planning, leaving large holes in the
structure. Caffeine jitters turn webs into a haphazard
affair.
The deformity in the web is related to the toxicity and
dose of the chemical. Using a computer program, a Nasa
team at the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Alabama has
analysed the alterations in the webs and thinks it will
be possible to quantify these effects to measure
toxicity.
The spider could then offer an eight-legged alternative
to testing on mammals. The team has found that one of the
most telling measures of toxicity is a decrease in the
numbers of completed sides in the cells within a web. The
greater the toxicity, the more sides that the spider
fails to complete.
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