Animals

"[Like] water off a duck's back"

"The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line."

"A spider lowered itself, fathom by fathom, on a perilous length of thread and was suddenly transfixed in the path of a sunbeam and, for an instant, was a thing of radiant gold."

"“There might be spiders,” said Jacqueline. She wrinkled her nose, less out of actual distaste and more out of the knowledge that she was supposed to find spiders distasteful. She really found them rather endearing. They are sleek and clean and elegant, and when their webs got messed up, they ripped them down and started over again. People could learn a lot from spiders."

"He thought about spiders, twisting thread into beautiful symmetry, taming chaos with ordered nets that greeted the dawn, hung with globes of dew that caught and held cores of sunlight, and tiny images of the world."

"Ballooning has fascinated scientists for years. Charles Darwin noted its occurrence aboard the HMS Beagle, filling the ship with more spiders than he would have cared for. Spiders have proven quite adept at riding the waves, electric or otherwise, even measuring out the wind strength and adjusting themselves accordingly."

"Spiders can't fly, but they can naturally paraglide. Their ability is known as ballooning, and scientists have now shown that it extends further than windy thermals. Electric fields are strong enough to trigger ballooning even when there's no wind."

"This isn't the team's first silken discovery either. In a 2017 study, they looked closely at how the little arachnids spin their silk, finding that they create tiny loops which add toughess to the fibers. Each strand has up to 500 loops per inch. Miceli reports that previous studies had proposed that nanostrands were involved in the makeup of the silk, but no one had considered that the entire strand would be composed of them. Armed with the new research and information about the loops, the researchers have now created a new model for the spider silk’s structure. The nanotendrils aren't braided together like in a rope cable, but are instead stuck together with relativley weak bonds. When they act as a whole, however, the strands give the silk its incredible strength."

"In their latest study in the journal ACS Macro Letters, the team found that instead of being one long strand of protein, the ribbon of silk is composed entirely of 1 micron-long nanostrands stuck together in parallel. Typically, about 2,500 of these mini-strands clung together to form one strand of silk. “We were expecting to find that the fiber was a single mass,” co-author Hannes Schniepp of William & Mary says in a statement. “But what we found was that the silk was actually a kind of tiny cable.”"

"I've lately had two spiders Crawling upon my startled hopes— Now though thy friendly hand has brushed 'em from me, Yet still they crawl offensive to mine eyes: I would have some kind friend to tread upon 'em."

"Spider silk is often touted as some of the strongest material on Earth: According to some calculations, it can be up to five times stronger than steel cable of similar weight—though that comparison is not perfect. If humans could manufacture spider silk on an industrial scale, which they’ve been trying to do for decades, it could lead to an era of lightweight bulletproof vests, helmets, superstrong threads and patches that could be used during surgery and even lightweight airplane fuselages."

"Spiders were around long before humans, and it is likely they will be around in some number far into the future, even if humans are not. When most land and sea animals died out during the Permian mass extinction, spiders survived. Spiders thrived when oxygen levels were both lower and higher than today, when the sunlight hitting the ground was both stronger and weaker, and when plant and animal populations were both greater and smaller. Silk and the evolvable nature of the genes that dictate it have enabled spiders to stake a claim on the land for hundreds of millions of years and they are likely to do so for hundreds of millions of years to come."

"Will you walk into my parlour?" Said a spider to a fly; "'Tis the prettiest little parlour That ever you did spy."

"Or (almost) like a Spider, who, confin'd In her Web's centre, shakt with every winde, Moves in an instant, if the buzzing Flie Stir but a string of her Lawn Canopie."

"Much like a subtle spider, which doth sit In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide: If aught do touch the utmost thread of it, She feels it instantly on every side."

"The spider hung motionless, like a dull brown gem in an intricate necklace. The web was complete, now, the last strands laid delicately in place; it stretched from one side of the ceiling corner to the other, quivering gently in the rising air as though strummed by invisible hands. For a moment Isgrimnur lost the thread of talk, important talk though it was. His eyes had drifted from the worried faces huddled near the fireplace in the great hall, roving up to the darkened corner, and to the tiny builder at rest. There’s sense, he told himself. You build something and then you stay there. That’s the way it’s meant to be. Not this running here, running there, never see your blood-family or your home roofs for a year at a time."

"I’ve heard that some of the larger spiders hunt songbirds. I have no objection to that. The spiders belong here, too. Let nature do what it needs to do. We who are people know more than to guide ourselves by nature’s practices."

"It's a wery remarkable circumstance, sir," said Sam, "that poverty and oysters always seem to go together."

"He was a bold man that first eat an oyster."

"An oyster may be crossed in love! Who says A whale's a bird?—Ha! did you call my love?— He's here! he's there! he's everywhere! Ah me! he's nowhere!"

"I will not be sworn but love may transform me to an oyster; but I'll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me, he shall never make me such a fool."

"As a consequence of their ability to accumulate potential pollutants, pearl oysters have been used as localized s of both s (Bou-Olayan et al., 1995; Al-Madfa et al., 1998) and s (Fowler et al., 1993). Furthermore, pearl oysters have also been shown to accumulate antibiotics such as and thus may serve as a useful biomonitor of antibiotic presence (McFarlane, et al., 2004). The wide global distribution of pearl oyster species also lends them to being a suitable candidate for regional or global environmental monitoring of . (Sarver et al., 2003; Gifford, 2006)."

"... Oysters taste like the sea. This fundamental truth has been pointed out enough times that it easy to forget how extraordinary it is. Oysters taste like the sea. No other food does. Not lobster, not saltwater fish, not scallops or clams or even kelp. Beef tastes meaty, milk tastes creamy, but the comparison for oysters is not a taste or another food but always a place. And a place—the seacoast—for which many of us have romantic associations. From oysters I learned that what's important about good food is not just what it gives you, but where it can take you."

"Secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster."

"The geology of is interesting. Differently from Europe, where the formations appear to have accumulated in bays, here along hundreds of miles of coast we have one great deposit, including many tertiary shells, all apparently extinct. The most common shell is a massive gigantic oyster, sometimes even a foot in diameter."

"'Twere better to be born a stone Of ruder shape, and feeling none, Than with a tenderness like mine And sensibilities so fine! Ah, hapless wretch! condemn'd to dwell Forever in my native shell, Ordained to move when others please, Not for my own content or ease; But toss'd and buffeted about, Now in the water and now out."

"It is unseasonable and unwholesome in all months that have not an R in their names to eat an oyster."

"When God made the oyster, he guaranteed his absolute economic and social security. He built the oyster a house, his shell, to shelter and protect him from his enemies... But when God made the Eagle, He declared, "The blue sky is the limit—build your own house!"… The Eagle, not the oyster, is the emblem of America."

"... I shall never forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature."

"... seashells were before gems, and they were money before s."

"I have a large sea shell collection which I keep scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you've seen it."

"She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore; The shells she sells are sea-shells I'm sure."

"Go gather by the humming sea Some twisted, echo-harboring shell, And to its lips thy story tell, And they thy comforters will be, rewarding in melodious guile fretful words a little while, Till they shall singing fade in ruth And dies a pearly brotherhood; For words alone are certain good: Sin, then, for this is also sooth."

"Poor shell! that Wordsworth so pounded and flattened in his marsh it no longer had the hoarseness of a sea, but of a hospital."

"I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely; and his countenance soon Brightened with joy; for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea."

"The hollow sea-shell, which for years hath stood On dusty shelves, when held against the ear Proclaims its stormy parent, and we hear The faint, far murmur of the breaking flood. We hear the sea. The Sea? It is the blood In our own veins, impetuous and near."

"I send thee a shell from the ocean-beach; But listen thou well, for my shell hath speech. Hold to thine ear And plain thou'lt hear Tales of ships."

"Gather a shell from the strewn beach And listen at its lips: they sigh The same desire and mystery, The echo of the whole sea's speech."

"But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue Within, and they that lustre have imbibed In the sun’s palace-porch, where when unyoked chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave: Shake one, and it awakens; then apply Its polisht lips to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abodes, And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there."

"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

"One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few."

"A work of skill, surpassing sense, A labor of Omnipotence; Though frail as dust it meet thine eye, He form'd this gnat who built the sky."

"Ha! Whare ye gaun, ye crawlin' ferlie? Your impudence protects you sairly; I canna say but ye strunt rarely Owre gauze an' lace; Though faith! I fear ye dine but sparely On sic a place."

"Fair insect! that, with threadlike legs spread out, And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing, Dost murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about, In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing, And tell how little our large veins would bleed, Would we but yield them to thy bitter need."

"Meanwhile, there is dancing in yonder green bower, A swarm of young midges, they dance high and low; 'Tis a sweet little species that lives but one hour, And the eldest was born half an hour ago."

"To a good approximation, all species are insects."

"Al Azif [...] that nocturnal sound (made by insects) suppos’d to be the howling of daemons."

""Every flying insect that uses four legs for walking shall be avoided by you. The only flying insects with four walking legs you may eat are those with knees extending above their feet, [using these longer legs] to hop on the ground. Among these you may only eat members of the red locust family, the yellow locust family, the spotted gray locust family and the white locust family. All other flying insects with four feet [for walking] must be avoided by you."

"Thou art a female, Katydid! I know it by the trill That quivers through thy piercing notes So petulant and shrill. I think there is a knot of you Beneath the hollow tree, A knot of spinster Katydids,— Do Katydids drink tea?"

"An inordinate fondness for beetles."