Scientists Capture Footage of Spider Catapulting Prey Into Web Using Ingenious Snare Trap

Scientists have captured incredible footage of a spider building an ingenious snare trap to catapult its prey into its web.

In the extraordinary video, the newly discovered spider, that lives in the rainforests of Queensland, Australia, launches a green tree ant into a web with a g-force that would kill a human, according to a report by New Scientist.

Researchers recorded accelerations of up to 4484 feet (1,367 meters) per second squared when green tree ants trigger the snare trap. This is about 130 times the force of gravity, a level of force that would be lethal to humans. Once the ant is immobilized in the web, the spider wraps it in silk before feeding.

The tiny and newly discovered species has been named the ballista spider after an ancient Roman weapon that used a spring to launch a stone. In a recent paper published in Current Biology, researchers report that the spider appears to target a single prey species: the highly territorial and aggressive green tree ant.

According to New Scientist, the behavior was first observed in 2022 by Greg Anderson at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia. At the time, he saw a green tree ant being suddenly launched in a spider trap in far north Queensland, but without specialized camera equipment, he could only observe a blur of movement as the prey was thrown upward by a cone-shaped web.

Then, in early 2023, research professor Ajay Narendra of Macquarie University and postgraduate student Pranav Joshi spent 10 days and nights in rainforest near Cooktown locating specimens. Using high-speed and infrared cameras, they were able to observe the ballista spiders’ hunting behavior in detail.

First, the nocturnal spider builds an anchor point on a leaf, a branch, or the forest floor, before spending up to four hours spinning up to 60 vertical tension lines bundled together in a cone near the ground. The spider then wraps the cone with extra silk before retreating upwards. When the ant is attracted, it reacts aggressively, biting the cone — and detaching it from the anchor point.

The ant is then catapulted more than 11 inches (30 centimeters) upwards into the spider’s core web, at an acceleration of more than 4265 feet (1,300 meters) per second.

“To capture the moment, we had to push the cameras to 5000 to 7000 frames per second, which I honestly have never had to do… when I’ve been filming animals,” Narendra tells New Scientist.