The Trap-door for living in the desert
desert climates can be lethally hot for many living creatures. Nevertheless, some creatures have skills which enable them to survive in the desert despite the heat. Either their hunting techniques, the construction of their bodies, or their modes of behavior enable them to live comfortably in a desert environment. One species of the subject of this book, the spider, possesses the characteristic necessary for living in the desert. This living things, known as the "trapdoor spider" uses its insulated home in the desert floor both to protect it from the heat and as a trap to catch it prey.
First of all the spider digs a burrow in the ground. It sticks tinys bits of earth together with special fluid it produces and plasters the inside of the tunnel. This process strengthens the walls against the danger of collapse. Later it covers the walls in a thread it makes. This plastering technique is similar to the thermal insulation technique we use today. In this way the inside of the nest is made resistant to the high desert temperature outside.
We mentioned how the second feature of the nest was its use as a trap. The spider makes a cover for the nest out of its own silk. One side of this is attached by a hinge made of strong thread to the nest, turning it into nothing less than a door. This door also helps the spider conceal itself from its prey. It camouflages the cover with bits of brush, scrub, and soil. Then it stretches taut threads under the leaves, from the outside of the nest in. When an insect approaches the nest and steps on leaves or the earth, the ground threads start to vibrate. Thanks to vibrations the spider can tell that prey is near. When everything is in position, the spider enters its nest and wait for its prey.
The trap-door spider can live up to 10 year in its burrow. It spends all its life in the dark tunnel and almost never emerges. Even when it open the cover to seize its prey its back legs do not leave the nest. If the cover opened with a twig the spider will come to entrance and make great efforts to close it up again. Females never leave the nest, while males only do so to find a mate. When it is time for female to produce its offspring, it firmly closes the entrance, sticking the cover to the doorway with its own thread. In this way it has been observed that the mother spider can spend a year in the nest without leaving it.
Trap-door spider hunt at night and keep the covers of their nests firmly shut by day. As night starts to fall the spider pushes the cover partly open to see whether it is fully dark yet. If it is dark it pushes the cover partly open and rests it front legs outside. It can remain in this position for many hours. When ants in particular approach the spider immediately jumps on them at lightning speed and drags them down into its burrow. The cover closes again under its own weight.
There is no doubt that in order to learn to live in the manner describe above some ability, will be needed. It will not be possible for the spider to fabricate insulation from the heat or to camouflage itself in the sand through coincidence or trial and error. Even before it starts to build the tunnel, it "knows" that it will use its silk to protect it from the heat, that it will use the same thread to make a cover for the nest, that it will use its nest to hide from enemies and also as an incomparable trap, and that it will give birth to it young in safety in this silk-padded nest. Were it not in the middle of the desert. That would mean the end of the species.
Furthermore, every new-born spider behaves in this same way. It builds its nest in the same way and feeds in the same way. It was not enough for first spider to have these surprising features, it also had to be able to pass all knowledge being fixed in the spider's genes. But notwithstanding all these facts, we are still faced with questions. How did the trap-door spider come to have these characteristics, and who fixed them in its genes?
These intelligent behaviour patterns, planning capability, tactical selection and implementation, and flawless bodily construction, which proponents of theory of evolution try to explain by such concepts as instinct, imaginary mechanisms, coincidence, or Mother Nature, can actually have only one explanation. It is God who gave all living creatures the skills they have, or Who created them with these skills already in place. God possesses incomparable knowledge.
لَهُۥ مَا فِي ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَمَا فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَمَا بَيۡنَهُمَا وَمَا تَحۡتَ ٱلثَّرَىٰ
Everything in the heavens and everything on the earth and everything in between them and everything under the ground belongs to Him.
(Surah Ta Ha: 6)
By: HARUN YAHYA