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Norm Platnick of the American Museum of Natural History will curate the ‘Spiders Alive!’ exhibit

 

As part of Spider-Man Week in NYC, the web-slinger himself will deliver a tarantula to the museum.

Norman I. Platnick has been obsessed with arachnids for almost 40 years — and he hopes “The Amazing Spider-Man,” opening July 3, will get New Yorkers bitten by the bug, too.

“They can be just as beautiful as butterflies,” says Platnick, the Peter J. Solomon Family Curator Emeritus of Spiders at the American Museum of Natural History.

Fans can get a chance to see for themselves Wednesday when the “reel” Spider-Man meets “Doc Plat” on his home turf: As part of Spider-Man week in New York City, the heroic wall-crawler will “sling” from the roof of the Museum to hand-deliver a live Chilean rose tarantula.

The tarantula will be part of he upcoming “Spiders Alive!” exhibition (which officially opens July 28), which Platnick will curate. More than 20 species of living spiders will coexist with interactive exhibits to let visitors explore all kinds of arachnid facts.

“The Amazing Spider-Man” star Andrew Garfield — Peter Parker himself — will also make an appearance.

In addition to the museum exhibit, Platnick, who holds a Ph.D. from Harvard, leads the largest research project ever launched on spiders: attempting to map and describe the world’s 2,000-plus species of goblin spiders.

“There are about 43,000 species of spiders that we know of, and that is probably only half of what’s out there in the world,” he marvels.

“Every morning, I can sit down at my microscope and look at something that nobody on this planet has ever seen before.”

Platnick, 61, became stuck on spiders while he was on a field study with his wife in southwest Virginia in 1973.

The pair were actually supposed to be collecting millipedes, he says, “but when we would get back to the lab, there would be nothing in my jars except spiders.”

Platnick tried identifying what he caught, and successfully pegged a funnel web spider common to the Appalachian Mountains.

“My professor told me to try another one, and I just never stopped,” he says.

And so, just as with Spider-Man’s alter-ego Peter Parker, a lifelong connection was born.

Platnick says that to him, it’s only natural that his favorite creepy-crawlers would spawn a beloved superhero like Spider-Man. “The silk they produce is a remarkable compound,” he says, referring to the web strands Spidey shoots to swing from skyscrapers. “It has strength greater than steel for its dimensions, and it can expand.”

Platnick notes that the military and some private companies are working furiously, with limited success, to synthesize a similar material for ropes and parachutes.

“Spiders are biological engineers,” he says. “And spiders moving on the ground can be astonishingly fast — but only for short distances.”

And remember, the planet would fall apart without the protection of the natural predators.

“We can’t live without bees, or we don’t get any pollination of crops. It’s the same thing with spiders,” says Platnick.

“If there were no spiders, most crops wouldn’t grow because they would be devoured by insects. Our planet would be overrun with bugs. ”

And with our mild winter expected to spawn record numbers of pests this summer, the city could use all the spiders it can get.

“Spider-Man is great in that he brings positive attention to spiders, particularly here in Manhattan where lots of kids go through their lives with little or no exposure to the natural world.

“Hopefully it will take people who might initially be scared of spiders, and show them that spiders are fascinating and beautiful — not something to be feared,” says Platnick, who swears not one of his specimens has ever bitten him after 40 years in the field.

“Most spiders are so small that they can’t break your skin,” he scoffs. “And the likelihood of encountering a spider that can actually harm you is particularly small.”

See, Doc Ock, Green Goblin and the Lizard? You have nothing to fear from Spider-Man.

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