Space agency NASA has a pretty great reputation around the world for its various missions exploring the Solar System. But it can conduct some pretty unusual research too, highlighted by the time they got spiders high on street drugs and watched what happened to their webs.
In 1948, Swiss pharmacologist Peter N. Witt began attempting to investigate the effect that drugs have on spiders. Keeping them in a temperature- and light-controlled room, he fed the spiders amphetamines, mescaline, caffeine, and LSD, as well as dosing them with carbon monoxide. Then, he watched the effect that these drugs had on the spiders’ web-making abilities.
Spiders know how to build their webs instinctively, not learning how to do so from other spiders.
