Clay Harding
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Learn about the different kinds of spider webs, the silk they are made of and how spiders spin them. Find out how spiders use silk for hunting, hiding, dispersing and more.
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Spiders spin webs out of silk, but they also use their threads as slingshots, submarines, and hang-gliders.
Spider silk is one of the most versatile materials on Earth. Actually a protein created by special organs known as spinnerets, spider silk can be used for transportation, shelter, courtship, and all kinds of creative ways to trap prey.
Some spiders can produce more than one type of silk. A common orb-web, for example, may contain at least four different kinds, each adding a different component, such as strength, flexibility, and stickiness.
Equipped with such a versatile material, spiders have evolved to create a wondrous assortment of webs. There are horizontal sheet webs that catch falling prey and vertical latticework webs that intercept flying prey. Black widow webs are messy affairs, while funnel webs and lampshade webs can resemble three-dimensional sculptures. Spiders in the Theridiosomatidae family build conical webs that can fire a spider at nearby prey like a slingshot, while ogre-faced spiders nab their meals with hand-held nets. (Read about the spider that uses its web to shoot itself faster than a rocket.)
The redback spider of Australia spins a tangled web with sticky, “gum-footed” lines that stretch straight down to the ground like a beaded curtain. When ants or crickets brush up against one of these tendrils, the line snags the prey and then snaps, drawing the helpless creature up into the air where it will dangle until the redback decides to eat it.
“Some spiders produce a silk that is low in UV reflection and is also translucent, so insects can’t see it,” says Catherine Craig, an evolutionary biologist and author of Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating.
For hundreds of millions of years, before the evolution of webs, and even before there were flies to catch in them, spiders used their silk glands for shelter.
“Spider silk is incredibly strong and flexible,” says Catherine Scott, an arachnologist at the University of Toronto Scarborough. “It also tends to be very clean and have anti-microbial properties, because spiders don’t want molds and microbes growing on their webs.”
Some spiders, like those on the 300-million-year-old Mesothelae branch of the spider family tree, dig burrows on slopes and banks and line them with layers of gauze-like silk. Next, these spiders construct circular, hobbit-hole doors complete with a silk-bound hinge. Not only does this hide the spiders from predators and enable them to pounce on unsuspecting prey, but the doors seal the predators off from the world and allow the spiders to regulate the burrow’s temperature and humidity—and even protect them against flooding.
Purseweb spiders build silken tunnels that slink up the sides of trees. Most people never notice them, though, because the structures are covered in dirt and other bits of debris.
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See a creek blanketed in spider webs
While silk is an excellent building material, it can also be used for transportation.
Jumping spiders are constantly leaping across chasms, for instance. They protect themselves against falls by anchoring a silk safety line to their perch. This allows jumping spiders to crawl back to where they started if they miss their mark. It even allows change directions once they’re airborne with a quick tug of the drag-line.
Most spiders are tiny, but they can travel between trees or across enormous gaps through a process known as “bridging.” All the spider needs to do is let out a line of silk into the wind and then pull it taut once it connects to something out in the world. The arachnid doesn’t really know where it’s going, of course, but it beats crawling.
“And then I’d be remiss not to mention how spiders can fly,” says Echeverri.
Similar to bridging, numerous spider species are able to “balloon” up into the sky by releasing strands of silk that get picked up by the wind and Earth’s electrical fields. Ballooning spiders have been found floating more than two miles high and thousands of miles out at sea.
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Spider silk isn’t just strong, stretchy, and sticky—it can be stinky, too.
“We know that female spiders have pheromones on their silk,” says Scott.
In a recent study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Scott showed that male black widows can detect these come-hither scents from nearly 200 feet away and use them as a compass to find a female.
What’s more, Scott’s research showed that some males can make their way to a female even faster by following the drag-lines left by the males that have come before them. The males were even able to sniff out the difference between silk left by their rivals and strands laid down by males of another closely-related species, the false widow.
“Silk is a communication method,” says Scott. “It works chemically, using pheromones, but then for web-building spiders, it is also a dance floor used for male courtship displays.”
Partly to woo the female and partly to convince her he is a suitor rather than dinner, males of many species will tap, pluck, and otherwise send vibrations throughout the female’s web. Males may also remodel the female’s web by laying down silk of his own or destroy whole sections of it, perhaps in an attempt to hide the female from other males in the area.
Elsewhere in the mating and reproduction game, spiders use silk to safeguard their eggs and build nursery webs to protect their spiderlings. Males of some species use silk to gift-wrap food items, which they then give to females in an attempt to woo their favor, though sometimes a spider will try to cheat the female by wrapping up a rock or seed instead.
“By the time she gets to what’s inside and realizes it’s not food, he might have gotten away with a copulation,” says Scott.
Silk can also be used to tie a female up during courtship. This is called “mate binding” or the “bridal veil.” And while it may sound strange, this behavior may make the female more receptive to mating by bringing her sensory hairs into contact with the male’s pheromone-laden silk. (See a video of spider mate binding.)
Of course, the silk binding may serve a more straight forward purpose.
Learn how spiders use silk for various purposes, from building webs to catching prey. Discover the different types of webs and silks, and the amazing adaptations of spiders.
- Spiders have a design sense. Some webs are extremely intricate. Most people assume that the design is purely functional, but this is not always the case.
- Spiderwebs don’t intercept prey; they attract them. The presence of deliberate structure dispels another common misperception about spiders, that they set up in a promising area of insect travel and wait to see what happens.
- Spiderwebs are shiny for a reason. Many insects have better visual perception in UV wavelengths of light. Spiderwebs are much more reflective in UV light, possibly attracting insects.
- Spiders are sneaky. Decorations come with a risk; while they might attract more insects, they are also more visible to predators who may threaten the spiders.
- Orb Web. Description – This is an extremely common type of spider web, and one that most people think of when they picture a spider web. It’s estimated that these webs came to be around 100 million years ago when flying insects started to evolve.
- Tangle Web / Cobweb. Description – Cobwebs are very commonly seen indoors in areas that don’t get much traffic, especially in corners. However, they’re not to be confused with collections of dust/dirt that can also be found in corners.
- Funnel Web. Description – The aptly-named funnel web is, as you could guess, shaped like a funnel. Expanses of thread span over a variety of distances, and they meet in the middle where they form a cylindrical hole.
- Sheet Web. Description – These interesting webs take the classic web design and turn it horizontally. You can find these hammock-like webs draped over grass, bushes, or other structures.
The spider's web is one of nature's greatest engineering feats but how are they made? Find out in just 30 seconds with our simple explanation, complete with ...
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- howitworksmag
Dec 3, 2015 · Learn about the amazing engineering and diversity of spider silk and web-building. Discover how spiders use their spinnerets, legs and silk glands to create different types of webs for offense and defense.
Sep 16, 2024 · The spider, attached by a thread to vegetation, holds one thread from the tip of the hub until an insect brushes the web. The spider then alternately relaxes and tightens the thread, and the struggling victim becomes completely entangled. Tiny theridiosomatid spiders also control web tension.
