Bola-throwing/net-casting/web-spinning spiders: do genes encode a specific move?

[Anthony PV]

Some spider species are nicknamed 'bola spiders' because they hunt their prey by swinging a blob of sticky silk to catch it...



... while spiders of the Deinopidae family (also called ogre-face spiders) hunt by using their silk as nets to cast it upon their prey...



... and, of course, most spiders use their silk to spin a web and wait some insect gets caught in it.

Question: Any idea how these tiny animals, with brains the size of pea, automatically know ho perform these complex moves the moment they hatch from their eggs? While us, puny humans, need to be taught how to walk on our two legs through feedback coming from other humans? Are these 'moves' encoded inside their specific DNA or what?

[Iloko]

I'm not a big expert on insects to be honest. They may be able to do such amazing feats in comparison to humans, but they sure as hell don't have brains like ours.

In this video they show how they've successfully simulated a worm brain into a lego robot which is very cool:


...They've done the same for the cat's brain, and hoping to eventually complete one for the human: https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...-of-cat-brain/

[Anthony PV]

I'm not a big expert on insects to be honest. They may be able to do such amazing feats in comparison to humans, but they sure as hell don't have brains like ours.

At last, a reply!

In this video they show how they've successfully simulated a worm brain into a lego robot which is very cool:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_i1NKPzbjM

...They've done the same for the cat's brain, and hoping to eventually complete one for the human: https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...-of-cat-brain/

Speaking of computers simulating the brain of various animals, I browsed Google asking whether 'web-spinning is innate or acquired among spiders' following the publication of this thread... And, apparently, if genetics and computer programing function similarly, then it is possible that the way a spider uses its silk is programmed inside its DNA... Below is a more elaborate explanation I found online, below ↴

A spider’s DNA doesn’t “know” anything about web building, it has no kind of map of the physical world, but it builds a spider brain with a set of web-building subroutines ingrained.

If: You have no web, Then release silk type A

If; You are walking on silk type A, Then: Reinforce silk with type B

If: You are walking on silk type B, Then: Walk forward 5 paces, turn 20 degrees

That’s not a map of the world, it’s a set of simple instructions that manifest themselves as a spider web. Those instructions exist because at some point a slightly simplified version worked better than other spider versions in existence. A spider is a robot, its brain is a computer, and its DNA is raw code.

[source: QUORA.COM, How does a spider know how to make spiderwebs?, https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-spi...ake-spiderwebs]

If that's the case, it's still fascinating to see that nature 'programmed' these creatures to perform these given moves while humans have to use their imagination and their intelligence to figure them out. On the same weblink I posted above, some user wrote that scientists drugged spiders with LSD to see how they will spin their webs...