Shigeyoshi Osaki can read the minds of spiders. Or so you would think, if you see the way he handles the eight-legged arthropods.
Osaki, professor at the department of biomacromolecules at Nara Medical University in the city of Kashihara, Nara Prefecture, is also one of Japan's foremost researchers on spiders, especially spider silk.
When The Japan Times recently visited his office, where he keeps hundreds of spiders for research, he achieved the astonishing feat of harvesting silk from a spider with several-centimeter-long legs — right on cue.