Nephila pilipes spider on a web. Credit: Liu et al., Sci. Adv. 2019; 5 : eaau9183 Spider dragline silk exhibits a unique self-powered actuation, controlled simply by tuning relative humidity, ...

View a video interview with Markus Buehler of MIT, an animation of a spider web under extremes stresses, and an animation of a spider web subjected to mechanical forces. While researchers have long ...

Spiders in the family Uloboridae construct unusual web forms including horizontal, vertical, and reduced orb webs with varying degrees of modified architecture. The most extreme examples include the ...

Spider silk has attracted the attention of many scientists because of its desirable physical properties. Most of this attention has been devoted to dragline silk, a thread that has high tensile ...

A spider web gets its strength from silk strands working together and their ability to stretch when stressed, new research suggests. Out in the wild world, webs need to deal with different types of ...

A study that combines experimental observations of spider webs with complex computer simulations has shown that web durability depends not only on silk strength, but on how overall web design ...

While researchers have long known of the incredible strength of spider silk, the robust nature of the tiny filaments cannot alone explain how webs survive multiple tears and winds that exceed ...