The Spider That Wove the First Fishing Net

In the beginning, the Igbo people who lived by the river caught fish one by one with a spear, and they were often hungry. A woman named Ada was watching a Spider spin its web between two reeds over the water. A fly was caught in the web. This gave Ada an idea. She went home and began to weave a giant web from strong plant fibers, just like the spider's. She and her husband took the "web" to the river and stretched it across a narrow channel. Many fish were caught in its threads. This was the first fishing net. The people now had a way to catch many fish at once and the village never went hungry again. The Spider was honored as a great teacher, a creature that held the secret to weaving and trapping. The story is a "culture hero" myth that attributes the origin of a key technology (net-weaving) to the intelligent observation of a small animal.