Build around the larva: six pieces, ten silk bonds.
BEYOND THE WEB · YOUR EXPERIMENT
Will the same case survive a faster current?
Test A records your design and current. Test B uses that exact design with a current 50% faster. The pieces, orientation, silk bonds, pulse pattern, and test duration stay fixed.
Settings, results, and notes stay in this page session. No account or upload. This is a game experiment, not a measurement of a real larva or stream.
By Rafael, WebTug creator · September 7, 2026 · Sources and teaching assumptions checked for this release
A shelter held together by underwater silk
Case-making caddisfly larvae assemble protective structures underwater using adhesive silk. Research on Hesperophylax occidentalis describes an adhesive outer layer around a viscoelastic fiber core. Adhesion attaches the silk to a surface; the fiber’s mechanical response concerns what happens as it deforms. Those are related tasks, but they are not the same property. Wang and colleagues, 2015: study and abstract.
Caddisfly silk supports different underwater architectures, including cases and capture nets. River Shelter focuses on case-making; it does not suggest that all caddisflies build the same structure. Frandsen and colleagues, 2019: comparative silk research.
What your construction lets you investigate
A material can remain attached at one load and fail at a larger load. Keeping a design fixed while changing the current lets you test that idea. If a piece detaches, identify its position and bond count before changing your design. If both tests hold, the evidence says your case survived those two model conditions; it does not establish an unlimited safety margin.
What this game invents
The six slots, ten-bond budget, material inventory, drag coefficients, exposed areas, bond capacities, and damage accumulation are original game rules. The model uses load ∝ exposed area × current speed², and bond capacity ∝ bond count. It does not solve real fluid flow, simulate silk chemistry, measure caddisfly survival, or reproduce the mechanics of a particular species. The case is shown open-ended. The character is a stylized illustration.
Beyond the Web
This section explores the physics of materials animals make, starting with underwater silk. It adds a construction problem to WebTug’s spider challenges. Any future material—silk, adhesive, or another secretion—will be named accurately and connected to its own evidence and experiment.