Well, as a fan of spiders (I know many people aren’t, but all I can do is gently persuade them!) and a film buff I thought it would be a good opportunity to combine my great passions and do a (sporadic) series of blogs on… (drum-roll please) Spiders in the Movies! I hope you find this interesting. (I guess this might be a long one!)
In this first blog of the series I will be looking at the portrayal of spiders in Spider-man (2002). So your homework this week is to watch the film and see if you agree with my comments!
Firstly, a synopsis. The film is based around a young lad who on a school science trip is bitten by a genetically-modified spider and then develops spider-related superpowers! He then spends the rest of the film (and, for that matter, the two sequels) exploring those powers and how he should use them to his and others’ benefit.
Ok, I guess choosing Spider-man was an easy choice wasn’t it? Well, lets look at the level of truth about spiders used in the film. Our first encounters with spiders in the film are when Peter (AKA Spider-man) and his class go to visit a lab where they are experimenting on spiders. It is interesting to note that none of the class seem to suggest any level of fear of spiders, apart from when Mary-Jane expresses a simultaneous disgust of/love for spiders.
The scientist shows them around and we hear her explain some features of various spiders in their lab. She describes one spider as the Delena spider which has the ability to jump to catch its prey. In real life the Delena spider can jump, but nowhere near as impressively as the (well titled) ‘Jumping Spiders’ – family Salticidae. Its better known ability would be that it can flatten its body to hide under bark as it hunts its prey – it is in the Sparassidae family (better known as ‘Huntsmen’ spiders, or ‘large crab spiders’). As an aside, the Delena spider was used extensively in the B-Movie ‘Arachnophobia’ – it was portrayed as an extremely deadly species, but it in fact poses no threat at all to humans.
The other species shown are a funnel web spider (Filistatidae kukulcania) and a spider in the family Agelenidae (relative of the European house spider). They are then shown the genetically-modified spiders made by splicing together the DNA from these three spiders. (The screen behind Peter shows the names of the spiders used, but accidentally misnames the “Delana” spider.) As I’m not a scientist I won’t argue the likelihood of this crossbreed, but suffice it to say the spider they used in filming this GM super-spider was real enough – Steatoda grossa. This spider was used, but was painted with red and blue stripes. The close-up shot of Peter being bitten was digitally created and suitably tweaked, as the Steatoda family don’t have an eye-arrangement like that!
This Steatoda is a cosmopolitan species that is found around the world (only recently in the UK) and is a relative of the Latrodectus family which includes the Black Widow, Redback and several other of the most highly-venomous species in the world. Due to this relationship and their similar size and shape, they are sometimes called ‘False Widows’. Steatodas can have a painful bite, but are not considered to be dangerous.
Peter is bitten by this malevolent little spider (quite unlike the vast majority of spiders, which are usually cautious of humans and rarely bite if they can run away instead) and then undergoes several remarkable changes in his body and abilities to make him more spider-like (aparently).
Let’s look at how factual and relevant these abilities are:
The first is that his eyesight is suddenly improved and he no longer needs to wear his glasses. This is somewhat ironic as most spiders have very poor vision and detect predators and prey by touch.
Secondly he finds that he is suddenly rather muscley and strong. Indeed, spiders are strong, able to haul creatures of similar or greater body-weight up draglines and often wrestle with them while biting them. However, spiders (as with all invertebrates) have very different bodies to us comprising of exoskeletons, rather than skeletons covered in muscle. Spiders’ legs work by moving fluids into the legs and out again at high speeds, in a process similar to a hydraulic ram. This is very efficient and is how jumping spiders can jump so far (up to 50 times their own body length!). So the changes to Peter’s body aren’t really like a spider at all.
Another feature Peter finds is the ability to climb walls. He appears to have minute barbed hairs on his fingers that help him to stick to most surfaces. (Don’t ask about his feet, he appears to just be wearing extremely sticky trainers!) Well, spiders can indeed climb many steep surfaces. Some can even climb glass. The equipment they use depends on the species, some have tarsal claws (horny hooks on the end of their legs – usually found on orb-web spiders), others have scopulae, which are a pad of super-fine hairs, that divide down to become microscopically fine towards the tips (found on hunting spiders, like tarantulas) and adhere strongly to any surface. In fact some tarantulas are said to cling so strongly to glass that they can support up to 170 times their own weight! Peter’s grippy-hairs are different to spider-equipment, but following a similar theme.
The Spider-Sense is the next ability – a warning system, “bordering on precognition”. True, some spiders do have incredibly fast reflexes (maybe because they aren’t thinking about their utility bills while they should be working), and many also have fine hairs and sense organs to detect air movements that could warn them of nearby predators, others still have additional backward-facing eyes that help them detect movement from behind. These features are remarkable, but are rather dissimilar to the ‘psychic’ sense that Peter seems to gain.
Peter notably also gains the ability to shoot webs from his wrists. He can create single strands to swing from, fire web-pellets at enemies, as well as spinning whole webs to form barriers. This is an extremely fanciful reworking of nature. Spiders can create amazingly complex structures from silk and use many different types of silk, depending on the purpose – orb web, drag-line, ballooning strands, egg or sperm-web. They pull it out of the silk organs and in doing so change the molecular structure of the silk from liquid to stretchy solid. There is one spider, however that can fire silk: Scytotes thoracica or the ‘Spitting Spider’. It had silk glands in its head and can squirt a mixture of venom and silk at its prey to stick it to the ground before it goes in to kill it. This secretion is more like glue than silk, however, so it cannot really be considered the same. Peter also has no discernable spigots or spinnerets to create the silk. Weird.
And so to a final question: Could a spider bite ever cause someone to develop any of these attributes? Well, in the original comic book the spider that bites Peter is a radioactive one, rather than genetically-modified, and we are aware that some radioactive material can cause mutations in the body. This could potentially affect the DNA, but the structural changes in Peter’s body wouldn’t fully develop in this way – in fact he would most likely just become very sick, become infertile, or die. Any changes to his DNA would affect his offspring, who would be more likely to develop different body-structures, but almost certainly not benefically! If bitten by a normal spider, or even a genetically-modified hybrid spider, you are not going to have any mutagenic effects at all.
Enjoy watching, Naturey-Film Gazers!
Of course, Dent does not, he instead fearfully takes the cage at arm’s length and whimpers as he retreats from the room. The spider is then slipped into Bond’s room and wanders inexorably towards Bond’s sleeping form. It then climbs the bed, creeps under the sheet and up Bond’s body, until it emerges on his arm, finally waking him (heavy sleeper?). Bond is obviously no scaredy-cat – he doesn’t scream, cry or start to babble incoherently: he just stares at the dark spider, planning his moves before the vicious and bloodthirsty monster in all probability devours him! Twisting with cat-like reflexes, he suddenly flicks the beast heroically to the floor, whereupon the music crescendos as he manfully squashes it half a dozen times with his standard-issue spy-shoe. What a chap.
So, do I think Fleming is a fool? Well, not exactly… the original novel calls for Dent to send a venomous centipede into Bond’s room instead of the mostly-harmless tarantula – it was the movie producers that changed this, due to more ‘awareness’ of tarantulas as a scary beast. But Fleming is not entirely off the hook, because large, venomous centipedes, too, are rather demonised as deadly beasts, in a similar way to the tarantula (see the American Tarantula Society’s article at: http://atshq.org/articles/centipedes.html). There are no known cases of death-by-centipede, although they can cause a very painful, nasty bite.
