QUESTION: Can wolf spiders survive drowning in water?
· Background
Many people including myself believe that no one not even spiders can survive drowning in water. Wolf Spiders have a respiratory system and i think that if they're submerged in water, the excess amount of water will fill up their book lungs, killing them in a few minutes. The reason I chose to do this experiment is because, Wolf Spiders are not to welcomed by people into their homes. Wolf Spiders, have fangs that inject venom into your system. The wolf spider's venom can cause headaches,vomiting , and inflammation in the bitten area. Many people would want to kill this spider that has entered their home to protect themselves by drowning the spider. However, what if drowning does not kill them? I think that if the wolf spider can survive drowning it is an amazing adaptation. Hypothesis I predict that all 3 wolf spiders can not survive being drowned in water. Experiment In my experiment I will place 3 wolf spiders in the same amount of water.The 1st wolf spider habited in a dry area where very few times a year did rain fall The 2nd spider habited in a moist area where a lot of water falls.The 3rd spider habited in an average area of rain fall. I will place the three different spiders who are labeled in 3oz of water. I will seal the three glasses of water with a wire net. For example in the picture to your left. In the picture, picture A shows the wolf spider at the beginning of being submerged in water. Then in picture B a few minutes later. As you can see there are barely any air bubbles surrounding the spider. In picture C, the wolf spider clearly looks dead and is at the bottom of the glass. However, oddly enough,4 hours later in picture D, the spider is crawling about in the bottom of the glass. As I researched, I found out that a wolf spider can survive 40 hrs in water by slipping into a brief coma. That is why in picture C the wolf spider was crawling at the bottom of the water. It surprised me that the dead-still spiders came back to life. Wolf spider's suspended animation, switching its metabolism from aerobic to anaerobic when oxygen is in short supply. However, the only spider that survived under water was 2nd spider. The 2nd spider had an adaptation that the two other spiders didn't. Because there is so much flooding in the area that the 2nd spider lived in it survived the drowning. The 2 other spiders would crawl on top of vegetation when flooding occurred. My hypothesis was incorrect. Wolf spider #2 did survive, because they were adapted to water, since they lived in very moist areas. If the 2 other types of wolf spiders lived in more flooded areas, they would've gotten the adaption to place themselves in a coma survive the drowning. |