Spider Web Construction Movie – Orb Wheel
Spiders are often recognized by the web they weave. There are many types of webs, but this page focuses in on the Spiral Orb Web.
Spiral orb webs and the ones most people are familiar with, such as the webs near your door, corners, lights, etc.
Technically speaking, these spider webs are commonly associated with the family Araneidae, Tetragnathidae and Uloboridae.
There are many types of silk that spiders use to build their web. The spider web allows a spider to trap its food without having to spend a lot of energy chasing its prey; however, the energy required to create a spider web consumes a lot of protein, so the spider will often consume its own web (recycle).
Above, you’ll see an example of a spider web (the orb web), being constructed. Actually, there is a lot more to building a spider web, but this covers all the basics and serves as an excellent overview.
Did you know that a spider’s silk strands can be stronger than strands of steel of the same thickness? In fact, many high tech companies are studying the structure of the material to help develop new products for building and design!
Here is an awesome picture of an Orb Weaver provided by David Cappaert at forestryimages.org.
Written by Jim on February 6th, 2006 with
7 comments.
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This video is totally awesome need to make a spider video as well!
I recently noticed a beautiful web, top line spun about three to four feet across–and then filled in in a triangle as shown in this animation. Beautiful! It begins to appear at or a little after sunset every evening on my back deck. It is gone in the morning. I just started to notice this one about four days ago.
My spiders this year so far are ”Boris & Natasha” and they weave
their webs in a different order from the video above. They start on
the outside and work into the middle to finish. Can you tell me more about this process? Does it differ with species? I’m in Northern California, Bay area. What type of spider is it most likely? Gold
and orange to tan colors. Beautiful!
I, too, noticed a spider near my apt weaving from the outside in, completing the exterior circles before winding its way to the interior. I didn’t see the beginning of the process, but noticed that it has to balance between two radials while spinning the thread for the circular part. How does it get from radial to radial at the exterior of the circle? I’d like to see a video on this.
You saw them working from outside in, probably for this reason. Some orb weavers build a ’scaffold’ working from the inside out, very quickly, widely spaced and non-sticky. They use this to help then get from one radial to the next when laying the sticky spirals, working from outside in. You caught them at the slower second phase. The sticky silk is slower to produce and trickier to lay – it also keeps their legs busier and so they can’t manage without the scaffolding. When a section of scaffold is no longer needed, the spider will eat it. So, creation or evolution? They both seem unbelievable. Did you see that a 110million year old fossil of an orb web was discovered fossilied in amber?
what is this?
There was a spider in my car 5 minutes ago. I killed it, but nit looked just like this spider, The Orb Weaver. My sister found it and nearly got bitten. It just apperared and it may have bitten her, I’ll have to check now.