How are spiders able to build webs across large open spaces?

Question

When I'm walking to the shops I go down an alleyway approximately fifteen feet wide with no overhanging structures and no vegetation or trees within sight- just two featureless wooden fences either side and concrete on the ground.

I always walk through a strand of spider web; assuming the spider isn't some sort of eight-legged Evel Knevel, with a very small motorcycle to make the jump, how are they able to get their webs to do this?

Answer 1

At the back of a spider, the large body section, it has eight openings, called spinnerets. Each one of these releases a different kind of silk. Spiders actually produce non-sticky threads so they can walk on them. Two, maybe three of these spinnerets have the non-sticky type. A spider lifts its body section skywards and releases threads that catch on the wind, even a small breeze is sufficient. On contact with a surface the spider pulls the surplus in, creating a taught rope across any ravine-or footpath. The spider crawls across this suspended thread towards the middle and repeats the process again. It may do this several times until it has required the outline of its intended web. Along one of these threads, the spider will crawl along, using its body length as a guide, then affix the trailing thread in an anti-clockwise direction. It repeats this process until it has completed a spiral of non-sticky thread in a large sweeping spiral, finishing at the outer edges. it then uses this as a guideline to add the sticky thread in between, going in ever decreasing circles to the centre.
Then some clumsy idiot walks into it and the spider has to start again!.

Answer 2

How Do Spiders Make Webs

Answer 3

The answers already given have covered most of the methods spiders use to construct webs. But one neat feature was not covered. Some spiders migrate using their webs. They build a small (big to them) sac like structure out of their web when they are at the top of a bush or tree(or man made structure) and when the air currents are right, they release it dragging them with it like we would in a balloon. There are certain areas where you can actually see them migrating on their webs. I saw this once in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Answer 4

There are several ways spiders bridge the gap.

Up, across, down and up again, however many times it takes. Each time it needs to turn it will attach the strand. So, it builds a frame first, then it can start filling in.

Swinging on a strand of webbing. The old pendulum technique.

Airborne assault. Where the spider make a kinda sail of it's webbing, then lets the wind take it.

Jumping, some spiders have amazing jumping abilities.

Spiders are about the coolest things on 8 legs.

Answer 5

spiders build webs large open spaces

Answer 6

They jump. They latch some webbing to one base and then leap leaving a thread of web in their wake. They move on and on from each point. Eventually their work remains on the web and they work in a spiral motion around and around the web.

Answer 7

they `spin` a long sticky thread which the wind or an air current carries across the gap .it sticks to the other side of the gap.then by dropping down and across from this initial thread they then build a framework,to which they attach the web.

Answer 8

They can use the very slightest of air movement ("breeze") in reaching across a chasm. Patience too, of course, waiting for the air to move whilst they dangle. You can see them do it in my garden frequently. Spiders are very clever!

Answer 9

Michael Parker and Roger Roberts asked the same question. You should see the answers side by side.

Answer 10

HA i know what you mean i have always wondered that myself, did u hear about that huge forest just covered in cobwebs from like massive spiders! Spooky!

hope u find an answer! x