Too cool to be disgusted.....

Let me just preface this post by saying: I HATE SPIDERS.....and snakes and anything else that has too many or not enough legs than normal.
But I recently came across this article as a link on Apartment Therapy's Blog and my curiosity got the better of me. I was intrigued  and confused by the notion that these disgusting and downright creepy critters had anything to do with design ( or were of any importance frankly....lol). While I DO NOT condone the mistreatment of animals-even nasty spiders- this research study was too interesting and enlightening to not look more closely at. 
"Many years ago, NASA performed an experiment where they wanted to test the effects of certain drugs on the behavior of living things. Since spiders are so fabulously able to spin mind-blowing webs, they were chosen to be the “guinea pigs” so to speak. That way, the researchers would be able to determine if the drugs had any effect on their ability to make their webs." 
As someone with a strong interest in abnormal psychology, mental illness and the intricacies of the brain in general; this was right up my alley.  The spiders were drugged with doses of Marijuana, Caffeine, Benzedrine and Chloral Hydrate. Then, they were set free to make their webs.
 A Frewnch sculptor recently saw these webs and decided to make free-form sculptures based on the webs of the spiders and aptly named them after which drug the spider was on at the time. So deliciously clever!
"French designer Guillaume Lehoux’s new project is called SOD (Spiders on Drugs). He designed these bowls to resemble the drugged spiders’ webs. These bowls he’s created are very interesting. Even more interesting is this spider story, which was his inspiration."


Here's the  (hilarious) research video and the (more serious) article on the  design project