You can now hear what a spider web sounds like thanks to AI

News

Scientists have shared what a spiderweb sounds like using Artificial Intelligence. 

Markus Buehler, an engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, alongside his team, recently created 3D models of spiderwebs to study spiders’ vibrations — their way of communicating — while undertaking tasks in the web such as construction, repair, hunting and feeding.

“Spiders utilize vibrations as a way to communicate with the environment, with other spiders,” Buehler said. “We have recorded these vibrations from spiders and used artificial intelligence to learn these vibrational patterns and associate them with certain actions, basically learning the spider’s language.”

The spider signals are low, long chimes, which become more complex as the web becomes more dense. Spider signals are usually completely inaudible to human ears.

You can hear the spider signals below.

This is what a spiderweb sounds like.

It is an eerie, foreboding, reverberating tune, enough to send a tingle down your spine https://t.co/9VST89wdFV pic.twitter.com/5bONConjmd

— Reuters Science News (@ReutersScience) April 14, 2021

(via Reuters)

Artificial intelligence, the doom mongers say, will make many human jobs obsolete, and some believe it will destroy the music industry too. But the flipside is a brave new world where AI and people can co-exist, collaborate, and make beautiful music together. In a 2019 feature, DJ Mag investigated the weird and potentially wonderful world of algorithmic sounds.