Slingshot Spiders Pull More Gs than Cheetahs Do

Using their silk threads as a catapult, members of a family of orb-weaving arachnids rocket themselves and their webs through the air to capture prey.

Ashley Yeager

| 4 min read

Listen with Speechify

0:00

4:00

ABOVE: A slingshot spider prepares to launch its cone-shaped web at a flying insect. To do so, the spider will release a bundle of silk, catapulting both the spider and the web.
LAWRENCE E. REEVES

Leg over leg, a furry brownish-black spider tugs on a single silk thread, tightening the frame of its web. It pulls and pulls, as if removing slack from a slingshot, and then it waits. Minutes pass, sometimes hours. Then, when an unsuspecting insect flies by, the spider releases the thread, springing itself and its satellite dish–shaped web toward its prey. All of this happens in the blink of an eye, with the spider and its web hurtling through the air at more than 4 meters per second (9 miles per hour) with accelerations exceeding 130 g. That’s 130 times the acceleration experienced in freefall, and an order of magnitude greater than that of a sprinting cheetah.

...

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

Receive full access to digital editions of The Scientist, as well as TS Digest, feature stories, more than 35 years of archives, and much more!

Join for free today

Already a member? Login Here

Keywords

Meet the Author

Ashley Yeager
Ashley started at The Scientist in 2018. Before joining the staff, she worked as a freelance editor and writer, a writer at the Simons Foundation, and a web producer at Science News, among other positions. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT. Ashley edits the Scientist to Watch and Profile sections of the magazine and writes news, features, and other stories for both online and print.
View full profile