Out a walk this morning and saw a web that could be 3ft square and the spider is the size of a penny. Do they jump?
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One of the primary ways is for the spider to release some thread into the air and let the wind carry it the distance. With a little spot of extra sticky on the end, it will go until it meets something. The sticky bit attaches, and the spider attaches it’s end to the thing it’s on.
From there, the spider can walk along that thread from one side to the other. It will attach a thread to some point along the first thread, then walk back to one side or the other with it’s butt held away from anything. When it gets there, it will walk up or down and stick the new thread inches away to create a triangle. From there, it’s a matter of making more threads across the space and tying them together.
Another way is for the spider to attach to a point on one object, then drop to the ground, hold it’s butt out to keep it from getting stuck on anything, walk across the ground to another object that it can climb up. More triangles. OR it could walk UP and across, but the concept is the same.
Wind and Air Currents: Spiders take advantage of wind and air currents to disperse their silk threads. Some spider species release a strand of silk into the wind, which acts like a kite string. When it attaches to a distant object, the spider can bridge large gaps by traversing the silk line
Balloon Travel: Some spiderlings use a process known as “ballooning” to disperse and travel over long distances. They release strands of silk into the air, allowing them to be carried away by wind currents, similar to a hot air balloon.
Try look up the spider that crosses the river I think it was a David Attenborough documentary maybe on bbc
This one it’s crazy
Highjacking the thread to ask of anyone knows how exactly spiders use small stones as counterwights? We have (at least) one spider who builds a web on the side of our house like that. With the stone just hanging there in mid air.
I’ve walked into it quite a few times since it is almost invisible. Forcing it to rebuild over and over 🙁
I remember once that i came out from the house to drive to work and there was a spider web that spanned from my roof, over to the neighbours roof some 25 feet away on the left and right and from the top of my carport to the hood of the car in the up an down direction. It had built a nice little web in that huge space. I felt bad taking it down but i had to go to work.
Wind power my dude. Think about it. How else would they? Not being a jerk, I mean you can reason this out without actually knowing for sure. If you had to cross a 30 foot wide canyon and all you had was a sticky rope, there’s only so many way to get the rope across
I read they can also hang on a short web string and allow their body to gain a static charge which can help them with a like charge as the surrounding air to add to allow greater travel distance.
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