When cleaning the BBQ last night, some industrious little spider had managed to get build a web in a gap some 2 meters wide between the BBQ and the tree and I thought how did he actually manage to bridge the gap to begin with?
Do they jump like some tiny eight-legged athlete, paying out rope as they fly through the air? Do they run down across the ground and then back up again? Do they perch on point A and fire a line across the gap line some little butt sniper and then build the rest off of that?
I am perplexed.
Edit: please forgive the illiterate title, insomnia’s kicking my ass at the moment.
In: Earth Science
Spider starts at point A:
1) releases a long fine thin spider silk into the air which flap & fly with the air current until it sticks onto a fixed surface point B.
2) like an angler, the spider will check for tauntness of the line (or tighten it) before moving from A to B.
3) spider will scamper to & fro several times on the line to lay more silk threads to thicken & strengthen it.
4) using its “footsteps” to measure the length of the thread, it works out the mid point & then the spider drops down releasing 2nd thread which it fixes at a lower point C. (think of a T or Y structure)
5) Using that structure as base, spider starts spinning, making its web using a mixture of sticky silk threads (the web to catch insects) & non sticky silk threads (allows them to access their prey) & voila!!
6) spider gleefully rubs its legs accompanied with evil chuckles & patiently waits for free food, no tax charged.
Disclaimer: I am not a spider
Imagine I am a spider, and I have stationed myself at the tip of a branch, let out a yard or so of non-stick web strand, waited for a good tail wind, and then… launched. I might not go straight across a gap. I might veer left or right. I’d probably angle downwards. But all in all my spidey self would end up a foot or two away from my branch. Then I just take up the slack, fashion a double clove hitch, and scurry up the strand to do it again.
I mean, it’s either that or something entirely different going on.
It’s mostly wind. The spider will spool out the web material into the wind, hoping that it will blow across and attach to an adjacent pole or object. They can start construction from there.
Different species of spiders use different methods.
Some jump across gaps, some make little web parachutes and float across on the wind, some throw little web grappling hooks, and some, just to be boring, just carry the web with them and walk around and up the other side, then reel in the slack.
They let out a strand that blows in roughly the right direction so that it sticks to something out that way, and then they adjust it as needed. They might need to try a few times.
In your case, the spider started from the BBQ or the tree, let out a long thin web that blew across to the other side, shimmied down the web to the other side, and then moved that end to get it in the right spot. After there’s a good horizontal bridge line across the top, it’s all systematic.
[A video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHA2TmvjdHk).
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