Darwin's bark spider spins silk to 'build a bridge' 25m long

Thanks to its extremely unique silk-spinning mechanism and knowing how to take advantage of air currents, Darwin's bark spider can build a 25m long 'bridge' across the river to begin creating a trap to catch prey.

Darwin's bark spider (Caerostris darwini) is a species of spider in the family Araneidae. This spider was discovered in Madagascar in the Andasibe-Mantadia National Park in 2009. This spider has an appearance that resembles tree bark. The species name is named after naturalist Charles Darwin.

If spider silk is still considered a material with extraordinary strength, then Darwin's Bark spider is the species that possesses the most 'quality' silk . According to analysis, the silk of the Darwin Bark spider is twice as strong as regular spider silk and ten times stronger than Kevlar fiber - the fiber used to make bulletproof vests - of equivalent size.

Not only that, the spider that owns this most extraordinary silk also has the ability to shoot super silk, being able to shoot silk lengths of more than 25 meters . Therefore, when you have the opportunity to venture to the forest where this spider lives, don't be too surprised to see a 'silk bridge' spanning the entire river!

To create a web, the female spider shoots a continuous thread of silk from one side of the river bank. The airflow will blow the silk thread to the other side of the river and create a bridge. In the middle of this special bridge, the Darwin bark spider will create a circular spiral web with a diameter of up to nearly 3 meters.

Picture 1 of Darwin's bark spider spins silk to 'build a bridge' 25m long
This spider can shoot silk that is more than 25 meters long.

The massive size of the web makes it easy to imagine that its creator must be a giant spider, but the truth is that Darwin's bark spider is not that big.

"The female Darwin's bark spider has a body width of about 1.5cm and weighs 0.5g, while the male spider is much smaller with less than 1/10 the weight of the female ," said Matjaž Gregorič of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. in Ljubljana, said.

Not only does it kill its partner and cut off its genitals, the Darwin bark spider in Madagascar also has the habit of secreting saliva at the female's mouth during mating time.