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newappeal t1_iuw8fxa wrote

Reply to comment by HyroDaily in Do spiders always build their own webs, or do they sometimes live in a web vacated by another spider? by GoodAndBluts

> Different species have different combinations of web material, so surely there would be some incompatible combinations?

"Redigesting webs" would almost certainly involve catabolizing web proteins down to their component amino acids, absorbing those nutrients like those from any other source, and then re-synthesizing new web proteins. Therefore, interspecies differences in web composition wouldn't prevent a spider from digesting and remobilizing nutrients from another spider's web, as long as it could digest the web components in the first place.

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ElegantEpitome t1_iuysb6k wrote

There’s a lot of big words in there sir. I’m gonna nod along and hope I understand what you’re saying properly

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newappeal t1_iv0pel7 wrote

Not sure if you're actually asking for a simplified explanation, but here's one anyway:

Spider webs are made up of complicated parts, and different spiders use different parts. When a spider eats another spider's web, it breaks the complicated parts (big molecules) into simple ones (small molecules) that it can use to rebuild its own web parts. This is exactly how our own bodies process the food we eat.

It's like how you couldn't build one model of car using only fully assembled parts from a different model of car, but if you disassembled all the parts and melted down and recast the metal, you could make virtually any car.

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