The final stages of making Native American style flutes is to play them for some time in the backyard, to tweak tunings or settings.  Birds often join me and add their songs. The Carolina Wrens especially love to sing along while the mockingbirds perch nearby to listen.

Now I’ve learned that spiders are making music, too.

National Public Radio included a story about the Oxford Silk Group’s research that found the silk threads on a spider’s web vibrate like a musical instrument.

The researchers found that spiders can tune their webs and then use the vibrations to determine the location on the web of prey or of a mate. Watch this clever animation to see how the process works.

Does this mean that I should be checking the tuning of my kanteles with the spiders?