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Published online 1 November 2004 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news041101-4

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Spider webs untangle evolution

Similarity of construction shows 'convergent evolution' applies to behaviour.

The biologist Stephen Jay Gould famously proposed that if we could "rewind the tape" of evolution and play it again, chance would give rise to a world that was completely different from the one we live in now. But the concept that chance reigns supreme may ring less true when it comes to complex behaviours.

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