Tossing A Net Spider Web

The ogre-faced spider might be homely, but it has a very special skill set: Rather than building a large web to trap passing prey, it builds a tiny foraging web that it holds in its first two pairs of legs. Then it waits patiently until an insect happens to wander past, and it captures the bug with its net. 

Tiny Trap Spider Web

This Nigma walckenaeri spider builds its mesh web on the surface of a leaf; it just needs a curved surface, so it can create a tiny hideout for itself in your garden. Other spider species create webs called the bowl-and-doily: A bowl-shaped web is suspended from plant stems and anchored on the bottom to a horizontal sheet (the doily). Insects flying past bump into a thread and fall into the bowl, where they’re eaten by the spider.

Black Widow Spider Web

These famously venomous spiders build another variety called a sheet web. It consists of a horizontal sheet of silk supported by threads going up to some support. Underneath, the black widow creates taut threads that hang down to the ground where they’re attached by sticky glue. If an insect bumps into one of these, it detaches from the ground, sticks to the intruder, and leaves it dangling. The spider feels the vibrations through the sheet and heads down for dinner.

Funnel Weavers Spider Web

Not all spiders build classic orb webs. There are hunters like the wolf spider that don’t build any webs at all and others that create very functional—if less picturesque—webs, like the funnel-weaving spiders. They generally build webs with a flat surface for capturing prey and a tube that leads down to their own comfy burrow. The spider rushes out when it senses that an insect has gotten tangled in its silk and drags it down to its lair to eat.

Electric Lines Spider Web

This feather-legged lace weaver has an unusual method of catching prey: It spins super-tiny strands of silk from an organ called a cribellum that most spiders don’t have. Then it uses special hairs on its back legs to comb the nanoscale filaments of silk, which creates an electrostatic charge that leads the threads to have puffs on them that are very sticky without having any of the gluey substance that typically coats webs of other spiders.

Orb Spider Web

These circular creations are made by a class of spiders called orb weavers that includes lots of common garden spiders. They adjust their design based on which insects they’re most likely to capture: If they mostly catch flies, they use a tighter weave, and if they’re focused on crickets, the web has to be stronger and stickier so the thrashing bugs can’t break out before the spider can kill it with a bite.