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Psyche 
[September 
Table 3. Wrap in situ behavior (i). Experiment with ‘winged’ and normal 
crickets. 
Wrap in web Pull out alone No result 
Winged crickets 18 1 1* 
Normal crickets 1 19 — 
* Spider disappeared before completion of pair. 
Behavior to live dragonflies matched in weight with crickets. 
Wrap in web Pull out alone 
20 0 
Time of persistent pull out attempts (before inception of wrap in situ.) 
averages. 
Winged crickets 
194.5 secs 
Dragonflies 
68.7 secs 
number of them that were wrapepd in situ and the number that 
pulled out and subsequently wrapped at the hub. We then matched 
the sizes and weights of these crickets to a second set to which we 
attached thin paper ‘wings’ at right angles to the long axis of the 
body. These dummies were presented in such a way that the ‘wings’ 
greatly increased the surface adhering to the web. We then scored 
the number of wrap in situ and wrap at hub responses. The results 
are shown in Table 3. The increased adhesion resulted in a highly 
significant increase in the number of prey that were subjected to being 
Wrapped and then cut out rather than being pulled out. The spiders 
made very persistent attempts to pull out the winged crickets, two 
succeeded and the remainder averaged 194.5 seconds of abortive 
pulling-out attempts. This is very interesting since the spiders started 
wrapping dragonflies (of lower weight) after only 69.7 seconds of 
pulling out attempts. (Testing these two sets of data-pull out 
times for dragonflies and winged crickets, with the Mann-Whitney 
U test, shows that the difference is significant; p is less than 0.001). 
We also carried out a further experiment on this aspect of the 
predatory process. In this case we passed a thread through the 
thorax of the crickets and presented twenty crickets with the thread 
hanging below the insect and twenty in which we passed the thread 
through the web and then held it from behind. In the second case 
we were able to prevent the spider from pulling the cricket from 
the web by exerting a force in the opposite direction. The results 
are shown in Table 4. Again the spiders that were unable to pull 
the prey from the web wrapped it at the capture site and then cut 
