Researchers have found that slingshot spiders, also known as ray spiders, use sound to catch prey. These tiny arachnids release their specially designed webs when they detect the approach of an insect, even if it doesn’t touch the web.
Scientists Saad Bahmla and Todd Blackledge discovered this unique technique in 2021 while studying the spiders’ behavior. They found that the spiders could be prompted to deploy their ballistic webs by the sound of a finger snap.
To test this theory, Sarah Han recreated the spiders’ natural environment in the lab, providing twigs for web-building and using mosquitoes as bait. The results showed that the spiders released their webs before any physical impact occurred, even when the insect didn’t make contact with the web.
Han used a tuning fork to mimic the sound of mosquito wings and found the spiders responded just the same, hurling their webs forward at the phantom insect. This indicated that the spiders were detecting sound, likely with the sensitive hairs on their legs, to identify the presence of prey.
The speed of these attacks is astounding, with the spiders’ webs accelerating at 50g and reaching velocities close to 1m/s in just 38 milliseconds. The spiders displayed remarkable precision, releasing their webs more often when a mosquito was directly in front (76%) compared to when it was behind the web (29%).
Source: https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/insects-invertebrates/slingshot-spider-ohio