when (some orb-weaver?) spiders are hungrier they build/adjust their webs so the strands are more taut, meaning the web is more sensitive, and smaller prey than normal will make it vibrate (every bite counts when you're starving!). but ALSO: if you station a well-fed spider on a web that was built by an extremely hungry spider, that spider will go capture the kinds of tiny bugs that the looser web it would have built itself wouldn't have alerted it to. they outsource the decision-making for which prey to go after to their web! they just adjust the settings til they seem about right for the moment and then go along with whatever the web picks up. "the spider will eat whatever it's aware of, and it sets the bounds of its awareness by spinning different kinds of webs." that's so cool....
























