Earth & Sky

How far can a spider reach?

You may have seen spider webs strung high in the branches between two trees. How is the spider able to reach this distance, which is often more than several feet?

For a spider to spin a web, it has to transform liquid silk inside special glands into solid threads. It does this by physically pulling silk through its spinnnerets – silk-secreting organs on its abdomen. Once the thread is started, the spider lifts its spinnerets into the breeze. Spider silk is very lightweight. Any slight breeze – even convection currents from a patch of ground warming in the sun – can carry the thread from tree to tree. Although the thread isn’t sticky or gluey, it is still able to adhere to the tree. Most likely it just gets tangled on small protuberances or it adheres due to static electrical forces, like balloons sticking to a TV screen. At this point, the spider can use the thread to “tightrope walk” from one tree to another – with the spider hanging underneath the thread.

Many spiders build new webs each night or day, depending on when they hunt. And spiders recycle – some eat their old webs and use the digested silk to produce new ones.

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