Awesome!
My fiancee when we’re hiking “Why dont you talk to me like that!”
I actually found this on my never ending news scroll, I did not bother to verify it as true, and wasn’t sure where to share…
Weeell, there have been multiple experiments that study how various conditions affect spider web-building, including the influence of drugs, e.g., see this review article on the topic.
However, it is highly unlikely that the spider pictured would ever build any of the webs shown, regardless of what sort of drugs it is given – the “house spider” being referred to appears to be a funnel web spider, not an orb weaver (the name of the family and genus are misspelled and should read Agelenidae - Tegenaria).
The illustrations appear to be taken directly from a short article from 1995 (Noever et al., “Using spider-web patterns to determine toxicity”, NASA Tech Briefs 19(4):82). However, the spider credited in the NASA article is Araneus diademetus.
That’s pretty much why I put it in “comics”
I’d consider it inexcusably sloppy research at best and misinformation at worst, not humor, if the “joke” is presented as factual and requires readers to recognize the mismatch between the spider species and the web type.
Now, I do feel like there could be a punch line hiding in there with the right set-up, something along the lines of the “Doctor, will I be able to play the violin?” joke
spoiler
Spider, looking at photographs in a lab: "Will my web look like that if I smoke marijuana?
Scientist (somewhat distracted and confused about having a conversation with a spider): “That’s what our study suggests, yes.”
Spider, returning to a funnel web in the corner of lab: "Oh, that’s great! I never could manage an orb web before…