 Yeah, we are live. It's 11 o'clock, November 14th, Children's Day. Happy Children's Day everyone. Children young, children old, children at heart. Welcome to a new series from HPCSE, Steamboat. Let me tell you a little bit more. For that, let me quickly share something. We'll let that play one more time. So happy Children's Day and for those who are watching perhaps for the first time and don't know what HPCSE is, we are the Homibaba Center for Science Education, a national center of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, TIFR, located in Mumbai, where we work on both equity and excellence in all aspects of science education. Now, science education obviously has got broader and broader across with time and we started with science. Obviously, from there we moved to maths and science, science and technology, then it became STEM, which is science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and now it's steam. So what's the A? The A is A for Arts. And you're wondering arts in the middle of science and technology. Now, don't we just separate everything out into science, commerce, arts, and these people are mixing it? Yes, yes, because science and technology can't, you know, we are part of society, society as a whole, right? And science and society are connected, connected and this connection is made so much more wholesome, so much better when we include the world of the arts and these arts can be literary, could be performing arts, could be, you know, all kinds of arts, all kinds of arts. Imagine if you're a baker, you're baking beautiful cakes, there's chemistry connected to it and baking. You're a web designer, you want to make something that looks good, you need to have the artistic input into what your user interface is going to look like. So you cannot pretty much today separate any stream of SDEM from the arts and hence we would like to feel that all these are actually creative endeavors of mankind, right? And in this creative endeavors, most of the fun is at the edges, at the interdisciplinary interfaces between these different branches and hence STEAM. And we thought, let's bring you STEAMBoat, which is going to be exciting stories from the world of STEAM every second Sunday of the month. Right now we're online, we're live and we hope you'll be joining us on an interesting voyage through the months and we're doing this not just in English, but after the session is over later on, we will also release these videos in other Indian languages as well. So we're trying to be having fun in the world of STEAM and today let's start off with, yeah, first of course I should thank, it's not just, you know, there are a lot of people behind this to try and get this together, whole team of people who work to bring you this and as we add more episodes, there are going to be a lot of people behind the scenes. So thank you all, thank you here and now let's get to this Sunday's, today's topic, which is on the superb spiders super silk. And before I hand it over to Survi, I thought I should give you a very brief introduction to our speaker for today. So Survi is a postdoc at HBCSE. She comes to us all the way from Assam and Survi has been interested in nature right from when she was young. This meant that she landed up doing a BSE in Zoology, following it up with an MSC and a PhD in environmental sciences and she's very concerned about wetlands and you know, all kinds of environmental issues and obviously loves creatures big and small. She'd love to be a writer, she loves movies and if you love movies, well, how can you not like Spider-Man and spiders? So that's the topic for her today. So without further ado, let me hand you over to Survi. Survi, all yours. I'm going to remove the spotlight and put it on you now. So you will be spotlighted and you can share your screen and go ahead. So by the way, remember people, unfortunately, thanks for this pandemic, we are online and because, but we still want to interact with you. So remember, the only way you can reach out to us is via chat. So please put your questions and answers in the chat box, right? And we'll try and take them as soon as we can and definitely after the talk is over. So let's get started. So hi, everyone. Happy Children's Day to all. I hope you are audible to everyone and let me share my screen right now. Anam, is it visible? I can see it. Have the YouTube issues been resolved? I hope it's live on YouTube. Survi had asked a question in the middle, but I couldn't respond to that. I think it's working, I suppose. Okay, lovely. So in this case, let's go ahead. The superb spiders super silk. Okay. So I'll remind everybody once again to put up your comments, your questions on the chat box, whether on Zoom or on the YouTube channel. And so let us start. So as you know, I'm Suravi and as Anam said, I'm a great cinema lover and my particular interest is in the genre of science fiction. And when we talk about science fiction, we all know there are some superhumans are there in the movie world too. And who doesn't love superheroes, right? And we wish, you know, that I wish like I had powers like some superhumans at least. And one of my favorite superhuman is Wonder Woman. And you can put up your favorite superhumans as well, like on the chat boxes if you want. But I mean, this Wonder Woman, she, this lady, she belongs to a fictional Amazon Island. Okay. And she has been given powers by the Greek gods. So obviously having powers like Wonder Woman is not possible for me because, you know, I belong to this, the so-called planet called Earth where I have been born and brought up as such. And having said that, one of the superheroes, that is the Spider-Man keeps my hope alive of having powers like him someday. You know why? Because Spider-Man was a human and then he later turned it into a superhuman. So let me brush up your memories about the movie a bit. So the 2012 movie, The Amazing Spider-Man, it is about a protagonist named Peter Parker. Now Peter Parker, he is an orphan and the protagonist is a science waste. And once on his visit to a lab, you know, he is accidentally bitten by a genetically modified spider. So here what happens, this causes Peter Parker to gain amplified athletic abilities like super strength, like that of a spider, then sharp senses and reflexes like again that of a spider. And in the movie, you'll see that Spider-Man, you know, I mean Peter Parker, he builds up a gadget, a web shooter, you know, that which makes him or which allows him to shoot different webs according to his wishes, wherever, whenever he wanted. And you will see in the movie that he, you know, he jumps from great heights, very efficiently, carrying his own way or the weight of another person using those webs, which is exactly like that of a spider, which uses its web, you know, for different different purposes. Now my question is, do you think that the bite of a spider can cause such great genetic changes? I mean, again, you can put up your, you know, thoughts, your views on the chat box. Well, a bite of a spider cannot cause such great genetic changes. Okay, so that is the fictional part of this movie. But the web shooter, which like Spider-Man or the Peter Parker, you know, develops, it's something which we can think of like we may have it in the future, because all over the world, people and scientists, researchers, whether in laboratories, in the institutes or in the industries, they are trying to understand the behavior of the spiders, the structure of the spider cell, the properties of the spider cell, extra, etc. Survi, you know, we've started talking about Spider-Man, Spider-Silk, Spider-Things. Maybe we should just check up our audience. Let's just do a little poll maybe. Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, let's just check it. Okay, so you know what? Audience, let's do a small poll and let's ask some simple questions. I will of course put the questions in the chat box as well. There are three questions in this poll. If you're on Zoom, you can enter it. I will put the questions on or somebody can you, I can't put the chat. So HPCSE, can you put the questions in the chat as well? Question one is very simple. Do you like spiders? Yes or no? Question two is of course, how many legs does a spider have? How many legs does a spider have? And question three is how many antennae does a spider have? Circular antennae does a spider have? So your choices are, of course, you can say, yes, I like spiders, no, I don't like spiders. I actually prefer Spider-Man. Those three choices. And how many legs does a spider have? The choices are two, I mean, sorry, four, six, eight, and depends if you got injured in a fight. That's also an option. And how many antennae does a spider have? Choices are none, one, two, or four. So if you're on Zoom, you can put it in. I hope somebody's putting the questions in the YouTube window as well. And let's see if we can, oh yeah, okay, there we go. Somebody has put in the things on YouTube. Yes, so let's see. And how are the other questions? Are you putting in the other questions of how many legs does a spider have? Are people putting it on chat? Okay, so let's go back. Okay, I think we've done about a minute and a half. Let's end the poll and see the results. Okay, so interestingly, we seem to have a split between people who like and dislike spiders. It's almost a half, you know, equal number of people who like and dislike me, a small number like Spider-Man. How many legs does a spider have? Okay, majority people think eight legs. Is that correct? Some people say six and some people say it depends if you got injured in a fight, which is of course correct. But most people seem to have eight. Is that correct, Surabhi? Yes, yes. Okay, eight legs is correct. And how many antennae does a spider have? Oh, the most people think that the NAI, even looking at the answers on the chat, most people think it's two antennae. A smaller group think that it doesn't have antennae at all. So, Surabhi, what do we do here? It looks like a tie between no antennae and two antennae. So, I think people want the antennas for the spider. So, let me tell it. So, before we proceed to the session, we need to remember that spiders have eight legs. They do not have antennae. And the most important thing is that spiders are not insects. These are animals. And they belong to a special class within the phyton, and this class is known as Arachnida. And spiders belong to the order Aramea. So, the class Arachnida also includes other animals like scorpions are there, the mites are there, the ticks are there, etc. So, can I move on? Yeah, I think you should move on. Please, we know. I think people, I mean, there's a lot of interest in spiders, certainly. So, before we move on, I would like to tell folks once again that keep on giving your thoughts and your questions on the chat box, and do remain blue to the screen, because in between the sessions, we will be having some more exciting and fun questions on spiders, obviously. So, moving on. Okay. So, these are some beautiful pictures of spiders, which I hope you can see it on your screen. And these pictures were taken by one of our team, both member, Aditi Moolidharan. She recently visited the Nordistan part of India, and there she collected these beautiful pictures of spiders, where you can see the spiders are at work, one has constructed its spider web already, one is eating its prey, others are waiting for their prey. And so, moving on. So, we often tend to tag these words with spiders, whenever we see a spider or whenever we talk about a spider, right? But, like, have you ever wondered, like, you know, how spider builds its web? Or why it builds its web, you know? So, here, spiders, they build their webs for different purposes, you know, like to trap their food, then again, for multiplying, and obviously for housing or for their own protection, right? But again, there are some spiders, which are called as the Psytoads. Now, what does the Psytoads do? They do not build webs at all. Instead, what they do is that whenever they see a potential prey, they spit a sticky, enormous substance and stick their prey to a surface, all right? So, now, Arnab, like, do you know, like, what are spiders most famous for? I don't know. They bit Peter Parker and made him Spider-Man. No, no, not exactly that. Like, but yeah, audiences, do you have any idea, like, what are spiders famous for? Like, I think, my screen is already hinting, giving you guys all a hint. So, yeah, spiders, you know, they can produce silk and they have, they are unique because they can spin silk. And there are different designs of webs that spider can create. Now, what are these different designs of web that spiders create? So, if, you know, it varies from a complex orb structure, which you can see right now to tangle form or even a simple sheet form, and there are others too. And the reason behind creating such different designs of webs by different spiders is because of their habit and habitat, you know, where they live. Like, if they live under water, they'll be building a different type of web. If they live on a tree, they'll again have a different type of web. And on the basis of these designs of the webs, even the spiders are classified. Now, let me take an example of this funnel web spider here. So, this spider is very aggressive in nature. And it is mostly found in Australia. And here you can see that it actually hides itself inside a hollow thing inside. And it waits for, it waits for its prey, you know. And like, whenever it can feel a vibration on its web, it immediately comes out and attacks its prey to eat it up. So, let's come to an exciting picture here. So, this is a picture of the spider. So, can you all guess like, which spider is this? You can put up your answers on the chat box again. Anybody, any guesses? Are there any answers? Like, I don't know exactly. Let me just check. I just put the question in the YouTube as well. Okay, yeah, yeah. There are lots of lots of answers. Shivani, Himanshika, Soham, Arvind, Dipto, everybody's saying Black Widow. Oh, that's right. Excellent. Okay. Yeah, everybody's saying Black Widow. Oh, somebody says female Black Widow. Even better. Even better. So, like any idea, why is it called Black Widow again? Let me answer it. Obviously, it's black in color. I don't know whether it's somehow answered or not. And obviously, because it eats up its meat. So, you know, like Black Widow. So, it's like, yeah. So, yeah, so moving on. So, I think we should just, people are asking widow why. So, maybe you should just clarify that. Okay, widow why. Yeah, after mating, it actually eats the male. Yes. Yes, that's the male. And the male is actually very tiny, you know. Yeah, it's compared, it's compared to the tiny, then the, you know, female one. And the female just eats them up. Yeah, the female just eats them up. Okay. Okay. Cool. Okay. So, moving on. So, like we just now we saw like there are different, you know, designs of web. So obviously, this makes sense that, you know, they must be like different kinds of silk. So, like, so, you know, what are those silk like? So, do you like to, you know, try like, what are the different kinds of silk? So, how many, I mean, let's see, how many, you know, how many different kinds of silk, right? Yeah. Does a spider make, does a spider make only one kind of silk? Or, you know, that's the put it, put it in your chat, put it in the chat. How many different types of, you know, spider silk are there, do you think there's like, you know, just one type of silk or maybe five types of silk, 100 types of silk, you know, what is it? And just spider silk, not all this silkworm silk and mooga silk and tassar silk and all those are, those are different silks. Okay, we are talking only a spider is right now. Right. Okay. All right. The chat is popping away and there are numbers between five and 10 and seven seems to be dominating. Okay. So, let me answer that then. So, there are seven kinds of silk, like generally, and most of the spiders and these silk are like, you know, fledgily form silk or the pyre form silk or the aggregate silk and major ampullar and minor ampullar silk. And the purpose behind so many silk is that, you know, spiders, the pyre form is used as like a double tape for, you know, sticking to a surface and then sticking its other silk to that very silk. And then to trap or prey, it's using, you know, the fledgily form silk. And obviously, when spiders not only, you know, feeds or like use silk for making its house, but also for transportation, right? So, there is this major ampullar silk that is generally used even for transportation, that is the drag line silk is there. And the aggregate silk, which you can see on the screen, actually helps the spider to stick its prey to the, you know, to the web. There is also a cylinder form silk, which allows the spider to protect its egg, like for the egg casing, there's the seedy form silk for wrapping its prey. Yeah. So, now that, you know, we know that spiders silk, different silks are there. So, obviously, the silk has been produced by something, right? So, it has been produced by glands and there are different silks. So, again, there are different glands for each type of silk. So, on your screen, you can see that, you know, these glands have been represented by different colors. And these glands are present in hundreds and thousands of numbers. Okay. So, now, since we know that this silk is being produced by different glands and by this hundreds and thousands of glands, so then how exactly a spider is producing the silk? So, what exactly happens is that the silk glands which are present in the abdomen of the spider, let me use a pointer here. Like, yeah. So, the silk glands are present in the abdomen of the spider, right? And this silk secreting units, you know, it somehow, somewhat resembles the stomach of the humans, but let's not mislead ourselves. So, this is the silk secreting unit. And then the spider, you know, secretes its silk inside its body. It is, initially, it's in the form of a liquid solution. So, that liquid solution, you know, it, let me again, remove the pointer. Okay. So, you know, so exactly, I, just give me a second. So, are we guys, I'm having some, Survi, you're in presenter mode. Get out of presenter mode. Yeah, sure. Like, hide presenter view, or just, just, yeah, just start again. Yeah, is it, is it okay? Yeah, this is fine. Just go ahead. Okay. Okay, I'm sorry. So, yeah, so I was telling this key, you know, these, the solution, it passes to the different parts of the silk secreting unit. And when it passes to the different silk secreting unit, and then it reaches the, you know, the tapering bacteria, it undergoes different physical and chemical stimuli or like stress. And because of that, the solution is, you know, converted into a solid fiber form. And so here is again, a picture there on your screen. So this diagram, the horizontal diagram shows exactly, you know, the difference in the change of the solution to a fiber form, because of the different stimuli, as I said, like now. And these are the solutions, I mean, these glands are actually connected to at the rare end of the spider, it's connected to a special organ, which is known as spinnerets. Now, spinnerets are the organs which are also, which are like spinning organs of the spider. And these are, when we like magnify it, you will see here, this is actually a pair of spinnerets, which you can see on your screen. And this is that of a Black Widow spinnerets. And these spinnerets, actually, each of the spinnerets have, again, multiple spigots. Spigots is like, it'll look like this. So spigots are tubular structures which are there on the spinnerets that acts like a tap or let's say that acts like a faucet for releasing of the spider silk when, you know, into the environment. So obviously, now what is this silk made up of? Now, this spider silk is made up of silk protein. So when I say these are made up of silk protein, so what is, so you know, you guys all, I mean, you all know that proteins are made up of like, you can, I mean, amino acids, right? So the spider silk protein is known as spy drawing, and it is made up of amino acids, mostly, alanine and glycine. So, but like the spiders, it also uses some other compounds, you know, on its web, so that, you know, to enhance the webs, in a sense, that to protect its web, like for example, there is a compound called a spirulidine, which is, which keeps the web of the spiders moist, okay, doesn't allow the web to get dry. And also it acts as a deterrent, you know, it keeps away the ants away from its web. And there are also some, another compound makes, for example, potassium hydrogen phosphate. But this keeps the web acidic enough to keep it away from fungal and bacterial attacks. Okay, so moving on, so right now you can see a very exciting spider picture. So does this like, you know, it reminds you of something, hello everyone, like does this reminds you of something? You can put up your, like, like you can put up your thoughts on the chat box. Let me give you a hint. Maybe give them a hint, yeah, give them a hint. Oh yeah, we have an answer. But let's, let's give people a hint, let's give people a hint. So the hint is it's quite a popular series or it was quite a popular book series and a movie series, you know, in like, back in 2015 or 2012, as far as I remember. And this looks like, it belongs to a wizard world. Okay, I think we should just tell them, think Harry Potter. Oh yeah, think Harry Potter. Does this remind you of something from Harry Potter? Somebody says Dumbledore. Sorting hat, exactly. Somebody's got the sorting hat, excellent, excellent. Okay, go ahead, go ahead. So this is sorting hat, now we're getting, yeah, the witch hat thing, exactly. Sorting hat. So yeah, so this looks like the sorting hat and thus it was named as the Godric Defender Spider. And this was, you'll be surprised, it was discovered in Karnataka and it was discovered in 2015. So yeah, let's move on then. Now that we have come to know about a little bit about webs, then a little bit about the silk types, now let us understand a bit about, you know, the spiral properties. And when we talk about spiral properties, the most common property, which we generally observe is its adhesive property, right? I mean, spiders can adhere, it can stick its web anywhere, everywhere, whether it's the house, whether it's the walls or the trees for different purposes, right? And spiders silk is also known for its biocompatible, I mean, and biodegradable property. I mean, these spiders silk are known to show more immune response reactions in different experiments. And that is why the spider silk is being considered right now as a popular or a favorable material in the medical field for making band-aids. So in future, you will be using band-aids of spider silk and also for stature material, like as in for stitching, you know? Now coming to some of the mechanical properties like strength, extensibility, toughness, density. Now, let me again remind you all that in physics, though we generally tend to use strength and toughness quite often synonymously, strength and toughness do are different. But, you know, do not worry about it. We can explain to you later, like you can ask me questions later in the end of the session. But to just understand these three mechanical properties, let us take this, let us do it exactly. You know, let us take some diameter of like some mm of silk strands of spiders and same diameter, let us take a steel wire, okay? Now, we are, you know, adding, I mean, we are attaching, I mean, we are putting two buckets of two containers in the end of these both materials. And now let us start filling water in this. So you can see the strands are in both the materials are extending because under the weight of the water, I mean, the container having the water. And when we keep on adding water, you'll be surprised that the steel wire, it straps off, right? And we keep on adding water, and you'll be surprised that the spider silk strand could, you know, almost contain twice the amount of water which the steel wire could. Now, this strength of this spider, like to carry on or to bear that weight of the container is what is known as tensile strength in very simple terms. So here spider silk is outperforming steel. And in this experiment, you could see that, you know, the spider silk was extending, it was stretching, even the steel wire was stretching, but the spider silk strand could stretch more. So it was more, it is more extensible than the steel wire, obviously. And this both these properties, that is the tensile strength and the extensibility is what is known as toughness, that is the ability not to, you know, to keep on bearing that energy of force, you know, before it breaks off, that is what the toughness is. So moving on, another exciting property of spider is its density. Like, for example, I mean, it's no density, obviously. So like, imagine you are on a plane, you are taking a strand and you are trying to encircle around the earth. So what do you think? What will be the weight of that? What will be the mass of that strand? Can you guess? If you just encircle around completely around the earth, what will be the mass of that strand? And he guesses, guys. Like, just think, is it going to be, you know, 100 kilos, one ton, you know, one gram, how heavy do you think it is to take spider silk, go all around the world with it? Do we have any answers? Somebody says one gram, 20 grams, only one round. Yes, only one round. Only one round, yes. Half a gram, one gram, 20 grams, five grams, yeah, three grams. Okay, people are like, at least, I mean, they're correct, like it's in the ground. But just 10 kilos, okay, somebody says 10 kilos, somebody says one kilo. Okay, we're getting one ton now. I mean, somebody's changing their answers also. 30 grams. All right, let's see what's happening on YouTube. YouTube says 10 kilos, one kg, one ton. Okay, I think we're covering all orders of magnitude here. So we've gone from one gram to one ton. So I think you should give them the answer. The answer is 500 grams. So somebody I think gave half a gram, I suppose, I remember that. So yeah, that's the correct answer. In 500, not half a kilo, it was half a gram they gave. 500 grams. Okay, right, right. So yeah, I'm a mistake. So we have, I mean, the spider silk is again, it shows a quite resistance towards temperature difference, like it can retain its elasticity even at minus 40 degrees centigrade. And even at 220 degrees centigrade, just imagine 220 degrees centigrade, it can still retain its strength. Okay. Now coming to one of the most exciting property of spider silk, that is super contraction. Now what is super contraction? When you take a spider strand, and if you put it in the water, that strand will just shrink in its half of its length. So 50% of its length. Now, what researchers are thinking is that they can use this property to make actuators like a device for helping in movement. So if in futures, people can come up with such material of controlling the humidity and temperature, then they can come up with exciting artificial muscles and robots and micro machines with this super contraction property. So now we have seen that there are different properties and there are different silk. And these all properties can be seen in different types of silk. But these properties, they vary in degree in different silk. Like for example, the dragline silk, which is generally used by a spider to carry its weight is more stronger and it has a lot of stiffness in it. But when we talk about the flagelliform silk, it is more extensible just to bear the energy with which a prey hits that web. And not only that, on each day, the same spider may, who is like exuding this, who is releasing this silk, may again have these properties in varying degree depending upon the humidity, the temperature of that day. So each day these properties, the degree can vary. Now coming to some applications part of this spider silk, spider silk have been used from very ancient times. So the Greeks were known to use it for wound healing and some indigenous people used it as fishing lines. And you'll be surprised that in the World War II, it was used as a crosshair in the optical instruments. Even in the modern world, we use the spiders for different medical, I mean, there are researchers for different medical, military and consumer goods. I mean, when I say consumer goods, not like textiles or for other consumer goods as well, even for bulletproof jackets, these are being under research. And one of the spider species, which is quite popular, is the golden safe orb weaver. In India, one of the orb weavers spider, which you can find is the giant wood spider, which I forgot to point out, but like one of the pictures which is shared from Aditi's, shared pictures from the North Eastern region. So there is the giant wood spider. Now this is a beautiful golden plot, which you can see on the screen. Now this is surprisingly made up of spider. And this was a project which was started by one of the textile engineer and a fashion designer, Simon Pierce and Nicholas Godley. And in their project, they had 70 people who were collecting spiders for four years, and they had collected 1 million spiders to make this entire piece of plot. Now this means do we keep on collecting spiders each time we want a piece of plot for ourselves? Or can we start rearing them? Like we have poultry farms or we have cattle farms, can we rear spiders? Well, the answer is we cannot rear spiders because these are predatory and cannibalistic in nature. That is whenever you put two million spiders together, they end up eating each other. So what are the options like to use spiders? Like how do we then have those spiders in from the spiders? So one option could have been chemically synthesizing them in the labs. But again, even though we have so much information about the proteins and their sequences or about the amino acids, still we have that information is very limited for a chemical synthesis in the lab. So another viable option is like genetic engineering. So right now the research on production of silk like spider silk like properties or for producing artificial spider silk, we have two different it is bifurcated one is like the popular is genetic engineering other is like enhancing human materials which can mimic the properties of spiders. So in genetic engineering what is happening people are genetically modifying the genetic materials of some organisms and are producing artificial spider proteins and then producing spider silk from those proteins. So let us learn a little bit about how this genetic engineering technology is working. So what is happening is that from the genetic makeup of a spider, a gene sequence, a DNA sequence is taken or some and that DNA sequence is transferred to the genetic material of another organism. Let's not get into too much of the details and then when it is introduced this new genetic, whatever the new gene has, the genetic material has made up that is being introduced into different kinds of animals like bacteria, yeast, silkworms and this is just like to be very, to make it simplified, this is just like you know transferring your SIM card with information from one mobile to another and people are using this technology to create the you know clothing particularly in the textile industry. So after creating or after producing the silk proteins in these different organisms now the question comes how to convert this protein into fibers that means we need a spinner it the spinning organ just like that of a spider. So people have come up with artificial spinning techniques okay that has the ability to convert this protein into you know fiber form but here you can see some of the examples like this are some of the products which Baltrad which is a company they come up with this beautiful you know goods I mean this beautiful clothings. So we can say that genetic engineering is one of the popular methods for you know producing proteins in bulk amount but there are certain limitations again that is the artificial silk which is produced using these proteins are very simpler in such structure as and what is happening because of that is that and also they you know they are not only simpler in structure they are also lower in quality as compared to the natural spider silk and they have less flexibility and extensibility than this natural spider silk. So although we have come up I mean all the people have come up with different artificial spinning techniques but this is not as efficient as the spiders spinning organ. So the cons are like because not only degrades the protein quality or the quality of the fiber there is high cost there is toxic solvents which are being used and obviously they have to manage the waste and the byproducts that have been produced in this entire process other than also there is time demanding and they are they require high energy. So there is another feeling like where people are actually using you know hybrid technology that is like they are using two different parent materials like they are taking spider silk and they are taking some nano materials which may be organic or inorganic and they are mixing it together to make proper materials which have enhanced properties of both these parent material. So this is like you know scientists some a group of scientists they came up with this unique breeding solution where they put up some materials into it into the water and they fed it to the spiders and the strands or the silk which was produced by these spiders had three times the strength and 10 times the toughness of the original spider silk. So when now that we are talking about feeding the spiders now obviously in nature spiders you know they hunt right. So there is this picture of Bagheera Kiplingi which you can see on your screens but what is so unique about this Bagheera Kiplingi can you like guess like why Bagheera Kiplingi is different from other spiders. Also where does the name Bagheera Kiplingi come from? Oh yeah that too. I mean certainly if you were in school you would know Bagheera Kiplingi you can guess where the name comes from. And yes Jungle Book is right Jungle Book is right. Yeah but the main question was what is so special about the spider and remember we've she just told you about they were trying to make spiders eat something eat something to make stronger silk and also it's something about what it eats. Yes it's color of course is very nice many people are saying its color is looks very nice and royal it's that's correct it's a beautiful spider. It's from Kiplingi's Jungle Book that is correct. No it's not the color it's not the color it's something about what it eats. It's very different from other spiders. Do we have any answers on the YouTube channel as well? Yeah I don't know let me just check the YouTube channel. The Jungle Book what is special about the spider people are saying the color is special the color is special. Okay I think Survi you should give them the answer. Okay the answer is it is like it's most of its food it's vegetarian that is you know almost like 75 person of what it eats scientists have found out to be you know it to be herbivorous so it feeds on plants obviously and most spiders don't right most spiders don't yeah most of them are carnivores yeah and this is a vegetarian spider and it's a jumping spider and let me tell you one more fact that most of the jumping spiders are actually they have a vegetarian diet but it's not that they do not eat you know other animals they do but they prefer the you know being being herbivorous. So again so Kiplingi as you guessed it right that it's from Rudiard Kipling I mean Rudiard Kipling's name and Bagheera is one of the character in Jungle Book that is the Black Panther which was there so Bagheera is that character. So moving on so now coming to the human materials so in this polymer engineering field people are trying to the mimic the properties of spiders to produce different products okay so people have come up with a hydrogel material and they are creating it at room temperature so that later it can be used for making different commercial products like weather parachutes or bulletproof jackets or like helmets etc etc but so having said that till now we have realized that the spider silk is neither the most elastic material nor the most strongest material but it has a unique combination of both these properties which is making the spider silk very very very unique in the world and obviously other than that it is you know producing these silk within its ambient within its body temperature within its body pressure and without using remember without using any corrosive acids. So yes you till now you have I hope that you could I mean you could appreciate the fictional part of the movie and the you know whatever the science part is there in it too and obviously spider man's gadget where he's producing that I mean he's making that gadget is way ahead of our technology where he's you know spider man is also making that silk solution and not only that he is in the if you like ever get to read the Marvel comics you see that he is producing ice webs he's creating magnetic webs he's creating fire webs so let us wait and watch like how much time we take up to catch up with the spider man's gadget and like you know some of you who are still yet to go into your definite careers who knows like you may get into this field of material science where you will get into the spiders in research because there's still a lot of there to be unraveled about the protein structure the amino acid sequences and obviously the entire anatomy of there within the spiders itself to create artificial spider in future so this is our steamboat so this is steamboat members I would like to thank them for I mean their help also some of my friends and my family members who are constantly giving their reviews on the entire video you can reach out to us at hbcsc steamboat mail id which I have been given here and also you can write it to me thank you so much for you know giving your attention to us and you can put up your questions your comments on the chat box thanks thanks over to you I know great I mean I hope I certainly learned a lot about spiders I hope you already you also found something exciting in this and I am sure you have lots of questions yes so please do put your questions in the chat box or the q&a and I will try and go through them and ask the questions to survey one by one so yeah let's let's let's give it a minute and survey maybe you need did not show this slide while we are doing q&a I mean okay okay then I'll stop sharing it so yeah so there are there are questions coming in both on the q&a and the chat and let's start from the beginning there are also questions on on on youtube so let's go to my let me keep both windows open if I can adjust them so that both windows I can see the questions yeah so we'll see what questions come there okay so let's start with a very simple one Trakea wants to know do spiders stink do spiders stink stink like a bee does it stink okay so spider bite to the sting we actually use the word bite yeah most of the spiders they bite because they are carnivorous and but one exciting thing is that even though they bite most of the spiders have this venomous gland in them but they don't but not all spiders uses it and some spiders are very venomous that are you know very harmful to humans like the black people but other than that most of the spiders even though if they have this venomous gland it's not that harmful for humans but yeah for their prey it is and so more than stink their term is bite I suppose yeah okay and let me hop over to youtube for a question and this is a very interesting question from Raj Gopal who says if other insects are getting trapped in the spider web how come the spider doesn't get trapped in its own web oh nice so actually like you know when you put a trap for somebody you exactly know where to step right so spiders have that thing they know exactly where to step in and you know when they weave their entire web they make it sure you know where after making the entire frame then they very actually put those aggregate silk on the entire web you know just for the prey so and they have this long web you have seen spiders in legs right they are long and so they use those legs very efficiently to move in around their their entire web and so they do not get trapped and they do not get trapped in their own web yeah that's nice that's a nice question though okay all right Shivani wants to know if why do spiders not have antennae how do they sense how do they sense okay so we know like till now we discussed the spiders of eight legs okay but they have two more I mean I don't know the exact words what we use but they have two appendages even in front of like in their interior area which is like generally used as it works like you know it works like an antennae but it's not exactly antennae but yeah there are two more appendages like in front of the spiders like near it's the first two legs okay so you've you've told us about you know making spider silk artificially yeah right Himanshika wants to know can you make a spider web artificially spider web artificially well I do not have that answer but yes the question is quite interesting I'll search for it I'll get back to you like young manchukha you can put up your question on the email as well okay I'll obviously search it and I'll try to reply back to you okay Pragya is asking about these golden spiders the golden beavers do they naturally secrete golden silk and why again again actually I can help with this one actually so yes actually the golden orb spiders are called golden orb spiders because their webs are not golden but maybe yellowish and it is because so the silk they make is yellow because they somehow secrete yellow colored molecules these are called carotenoids the same carrot carrot major molecules those are the same carotenoid molecules they secrete these molecules in the silk now why apparently people really don't know I mean we can't ask the spider why are you making a yellow web but people have many theories about why are these webs colorful it seems that the yellow wherever these these orb spiders are there are also bees around there and it helps them trap the bees the bees go for these yellow things so it's it's something that has developed over time you know an evolution so it is it is there is it's not just for fun I mean they do have a yellow web because it's useful for them to trap their prey okay let's see all right now this this getting stuck in the web seems to be getting going along so now you you just told them that you know the spider knows where to go and you know the different silks and it won't get trapped in its own web can a spider get trapped in another spider's web yeah that is possible I mean spiders I mean large spiders do feed on smaller spiders so I mean that's interesting but I mean spiders do hunt like other spiders as I said they are carnivorous but can they like my own experience I have seen spiders getting stuck in other spiders web like but why it happens I haven't given a thought yet okay yeah all right so there are there are oh that's an interesting question from Vijay saying how many eyes do spiders have and what kind of eyes do spiders have okay so spiders have from six to eight eyes and they are arranged in rows you know immediately like I think I could have like even in adipus picture then you could if I have zoomed in you could have seen that well like four it has eight eyes and it's like placed in this manner four here and four are just in the back of its the front four eyes and that is because spiders you know like they cannot move they do not have a neck they cannot move around but to hunt they need so many eyes and that is like a part of evolution experts so they have eight eyes six to eight eyes okay let me go back to zoom there's a nice question from Sagar who's asking how does a small spider eat big insects sometimes the insect that gets trapped on the web is a big insect so what does the spider uh spiders not exactly you know they do not eat up the entire you know the entire animal what it does is actually it sucks in the you know it sucks in the required I mean it sucks in the liquid from those animals and so it kills it using its obviously its venom and then it sucks in the animals liquid and whatever the liquid thing is there in the animal it sucks in those things so I think that is why it can even feed up on large animals I hope I'm correct yeah okay even like I would like even audiences like if you know the answers in the chat box you can also keep answering those answers so yeah so actually we do have a response to the making artificial webs uh uh thing somebody apparently has tried it uh and uh so there's a question about this this thing you said these spider silk contracts and what uh what exactly happened yeah yeah how does uh how does Ria is asking how does spider silk contract so can spiders uh web sustain is that question that no no no so this is a different question uh so um this was how does this is from Ria how does spider silk contract it's one of the older questions I've just copied some of them out so uh so I believe like and would you like to answer that like how does it contract uh I don't quite know how how it contracts but most likely see these are proteins which they interact with water uh proteins have ends which like you know can can sort of like water they probably form hydrogen bonds they get together they can shrink uh many changes can can happen I really don't know what uh we can find out the answer to this uh and uh Urvangel is asking like can spiders web sustain the water droplets yeah I mean you mean can it is the water droplet very heavy no you can even hang a pen sometimes from a web the web is very strong um so the the water droplet yes it just you know the morning you'll see the dew drops on the web so that's there okay there are some questions earlier which were on the chat I think there are it maybe you might want to do this how the silk is made very briefly one more time because there are a couple of things questions on how this thing you know what was the spider silk a liquid I think people the part where you said that the liquid gets pushed out and forms a web so people are asking how is this what kind of cells make the the silk is spider silk a liquid um you know all that so maybe a very brief summary of how the silk is made and spun out so you can just go back to your slides if you want no problem yeah we can see your screen you can go to full screen so uh so there are some cells there and the glands obviously and it is when it is first produced it is like a liquid droplet okay and then those droplets gets accumulated over the human thing so this is this is like a storage sack where they get accumulated and over the time this solution is pushed like whenever the spider wants to you know build a web or like it wants to transport it pushes that liquid towards the duct area and then it reaches the duct area what happens because of those physical and chemical like a lot of physical and chemical I mean forces are acting there and spiders what they do they use their rear legs their rear legs to you know to uh to bring out the silk you know to just exude out the silk to pull out the silk so during this force the physical force and the chemical force is actually converting I mean it's modifying the protein structures and because of that the changes in the protein structure is actually what is you know causing the silk to the solution to get converted into a solid form is like I hope like I could answer it like yeah okay I think that's probably a good thing also there is a nice question where did it go in the chat I need my chat window now there are too many windows I have Q&A chat and the YouTube window so there's a nice question from Abhijit who's asking how frequently does a spider make webs and in the lifetime you know does it just make a web and live there forever or does it keep making new webs or you know how many webs does a spider make? Most spiders they build their webs even within 24 hours they keep like every night they are at work like most of the spiders are and like they build they not only build new webs some of the spiders even they you know they repair their webs so so both things are there so every day they need to build their webs even though because webs are strong but you know like dust falls these I mean different particles falls in it and that causes you know losing out the stickiness of that web or catching its sting so your spider keeps on repairing its web and it's required most of them you know they rebuild a new they build a new web each day within 24 hours yeah some spiders but most of the spiders most spiders okay all right okay Pankaj is asking in YouTube the webs are sometimes astonishingly symmetric you know why do these webs have certain particular patterns like this? A very nice question but I have no answer to that maybe again would you do you have any answer to that? Okay let's go back to the questions okay you know when spiders eat other spiders I mean spiders remember you said have these venomous sacs etc so is the spider venom a problem for it when it eats it? No. Soham's asking that? I think obviously not otherwise like why would someone use its own web I mean I think no yeah that's the answer but yeah I can look up into like the why factor obviously like why and how do spiders communicate with other spiders? Well that's again interesting so as far as I know like for mating spiders do use you know some specific body movements for attracting its female mate so I guess that is one way of communicating that is yeah some dance like they say that in Italy there is a story that where you know people there is a specific dance that is used by the people that is almost similar to the spiders in Italy because they think that if they perform that dance then the venom of the spider will not be that much harmful to those people so that's a story again. Okay let's see do spiders what happens to spiders in very cold places do they what happens when you freeze a web can you can you is there any problem if the web is frozen if it's very cold? Like spiders they do even live in like cold areas but again I don't know how to answer to that but I'll very good questions yeah yeah very good questions yeah like I'll look after okay why why do spiders have hair all over their body do spiders have hair all over their body? They do have hairs on their legs on their legs yeah they're probably for sensing the hairs on the leg right probably for sensing you know because there is a ballooning process like for movement for moving from one place to when they want to move from to a longer distances they use their legs to just check you know like the flow of the wind in the environment so I think yes I can answer it answer it okay I'm also going to protect themselves from probably not okay let's see oh man they're coming so many so many questions it's tough to see what it is Urvangeli wants to know how to get rid of spiders and the webs in the house cobwebs I guess she means very practical yeah but like but why do you want to get rid of spiders because they are helping you to keep other pests away from you right yeah so Surabhi says don't get rid of them they're eating other pests so it's okay if the spider web is there that's that's one answer let me see if anything's in the new questions have come so what do spiders eat the most most of their diet is insects right other small insects so no no no fire webs and ice webs and all are pure science fiction we are not taking questions on them right now I mean spider man is is is a different it's not it's not yet it's a science fiction so there's some questions which are very interesting but they're all okay um so yeah so what is the what is sort of Abhijit has a question on on you know how do spiders fit in the overall ecosystem I mean yes we are often irritated when spiders build cobwebs and we clean them out but you know what what role do spiders in their webs and all play in the overall environment so what role their webs play that I cannot answer but yes they play important role in the food chain obviously because as I said most of the spiders are not harmful to the humans but they are eating the insects that means they're controlling the insect population very efficiently where you do not need to put in much effort like they are doing this thing for you so do you want to do you want to just one more time tell us all the different why do they make webs for many different reasons you said right just just go through it because there are a couple of questions on that as well why do they make webs you can whatever you can either just say it or share as yeah I'll just say it like spiders use their webs for different purposes for most immediate one is like you know for moving for transportation from moving from one place to another and second is like obviously to get their food third is to like you know like we build the houses so it's like a house for them so for their own protection and again to lay their eggs onto it and so yeah so these are some of the most common things for that they need a web for themselves so like I think it's yeah so I'm not like when do we start okay so let's see we yeah we are we are we are like 28 yeah yeah on time but let me let me just see if there are any more very interesting questions thank you so much for asking all these beautiful questions there are a few more in the zoom just hang on okay let's see if there are any good questions on the science yes there's one question on artificial spider webs would it be possible to create branched polymer based artificial spider silk it might be more strong yeah I guess so I mean people are doing a lot of experiments with artificial silk I mean most of these natural fibers are so complex it's not just not just one protein so it's always very difficult to do poor function is an interesting question how does a spider you know where does a spider lay an egg is it on the web itself so like again it depends like if like as I said to some spiders do not wear that do not build webs at all so but most of the spiders do so they lay their egg on your web obviously yes yeah yeah yes yeah okay she once wants to know what cell makes spider silk she just went through this twice now I mean it's these the spider silk is from a liquid in a pouch where it gets pushed through various I think an organ called a spinneret and from there it goes to spigots and then it comes out as the silk thread okay body coloration of spiders why are some spiders very colorful again I suppose that is a part of evolution in the sense like for you know attracting maybe insects because most of the time when you know these animals have I mean they have a colorful body it is generally for either you know to attract some spray or like you know that stands I think okay so we are sort of 10 minutes already beyond our time and I must thank Survi for patiently not only they're telling us these lovely stories about spiders and their web and their silk and you know I must thank the audience for asking these beautiful questions so thank you all for watching and please do put your questions in the chat and Survi can you just share the steamboat the last link again our website if you want to find out more this is going to be an ongoing series we will be coming up with more you will find the same thing also in we did a live session in English we'd also put up this thing in Hindi and other languages in the next few weeks and the email address is steamboat at hbcse.tifr.ress.in I will put it again in the chat as well I'll put it on youtube steamboat at hbcse.tifr.ress.in is our email and you can always approach us there so and remember if you like the video do subscribe to the channel that way you will you will automatically come to know when events are happening you can also follow us on twitter hbcse.tifr is the handle and we can send us an email if you'd like to get a reminder about your the next upcoming sessions stay tuned and join this steamboat thanks for watching bye bye