Scientists Are Using Dead Spiders as Horrifying Claw Grabbers

The assistant professor and graduate student wondered why a dead spider in the corner of the room had its legs curled up. Spiders are able to extend their legs using fluid pumped into their legs from a central cavity, which means that when they die, their legs are permanently retracted. They wondered if they could inject air into a dead spider's legs to open it. Their study on the opportunity to make a biological gripper was published on Monday.

Spiders can pull their legs in, but have no muscles to extend them, according to Yap. The way their legs are extended is using pressure.

Individual legs are controlled by the opening and closing of valves in the spider and this pressure comes from the spider's prosoma. They found that if they put a needle into the prosoma of a dead spider, they could mimic the pressure on the spider's legs. The spider could be used to move something. Why try something so disturbing?

We want to use them for sample collection. If we wanted to collect living bugs in the field, they have an inherent compliance due to the pneumatic orHydraulic actuation that we are able to apply.

The team found that a spider can last up to 1,000 open/close cycles and can be used to lift 130% of its own weight.

The researchers believe that other spider species could be used in the same way as the wolf spiders. Yap says that the group found that the bigger the spider's body mass, the harder it was to lift objects.

Most of the people outside the lab were supportive and excited when they saw how effective the gripper was. Some people weren't happy about having spiders.

One of our employees doesn't like spiders. "We had to give a call to the front office whenever we had another delivery coming in for us to use for the project and just kind of give them a heads up" Some of the spiders that the team ordered did not die. Yap said that sometimes they are dead but sometimes they need to be euthanized. We look at the most humane method to kill them.

The project seems strange, but it fits within the scope of his research. He says they look at the intersection of materials and fluids. Soft robotics usually uses materials that are not the typical hard plastics metals, such as hydrogels and elastomers, and unique actuation modes like magnetism and light. Yap andPreston are interested in using this as a jumping off point for other research, like figuring out how to open and close legs.

While researchers across the globe are working on bio-inspired robotics, Yap, and the rest of the team plucked biology from the floor of their lab. The work is clearly mad science at its finest.

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