Spider’s spring-loaded trap launches prey into its web

Key Points:

• Scientists have discovered a new Australian spider species, nicknamed the "ballista spider," that uses a spring-loaded, cone-shaped silk trap to catapult prey—specifically green tree ants—into its main web, a hunting strategy never before observed.
• The spider constructs a tensioned silk cone that, when bitten by the aggressive green tree ant, releases energy rapidly to fling the ant upward, exploiting the ant’s natural aggression while minimizing risk of being overwhelmed by other ants.
• The trap mechanism accelerates at over 3,000 miles per second, producing energy thousands of times greater than muscle power relative to the spider’s size, making it one of the most powerful silk-powered launch systems known in nature.
• Researchers filmed the trap’s construction and deployment in remote North Queensland rainforests, revealing the spider’s highly specialized and biomechanically advanced hunting technique that is finely tuned to a single prey species.
• The discovery highlights extreme ecological specialization and biomechanical innovation in spiders, with ongoing research planned to explore related species’ hunting strategies and evolutionary adaptations.