> Spiders don’t actually shoot their silk into the air. They make contact with a surface first, attach a strand, then pull and arrange their webs with careful choreography.
Spiders don't shoot their silk into the air when spinning a web. Some spiders, however, migrate by ballooning: they stand upside down, rear ends (and spinnerets) in the air, and send a thread of silk skyward, where it catches the wind or heat currents and lifts the spider toward parts unknown.
This beautiful BBC video about Darwin's Bark Spider (a species that spits the longest silk threads and makes the largest spider webs), narrated by Sir David Attenborough is phenomenal:
> they stand upside down, rear ends (and spinnerets) in the air, and send a thread of silk skyward, where it catches the wind or heat currents and lifts the spider toward parts unknown.
That was such a great sad-happy scene in Charlotte’s Web.
The article fails to explain how the fibers solidify instantly. Reading the actual research paper reveals the critical technical innovation: dopamine accelerates the transition by pulling water away from the silk, and a coaxial needle setup shoots the silk solution surrounded by acetone. The acetone triggers solidification, then evaporates in mid-air. This is the actual breakthrough.
Spiders don't shoot their silk into the air when spinning a web. Some spiders, however, migrate by ballooning: they stand upside down, rear ends (and spinnerets) in the air, and send a thread of silk skyward, where it catches the wind or heat currents and lifts the spider toward parts unknown.