Filmed in Madagascar by entomologists Matjaz Kuntner and Ingi Agnarsson, this video shows a Darwin’s bark spider subduing a dragonfly tossed into its web.
Females of this newly named (2010) species, “Caerostris darwini,” cast giant webs across streams, rivers and lakes, suspending the web’s orb above water and attaching it to plants on each riverbank. Bridgelines of these water-spanning webs have been measured as long as 25 meters in length. Studies of the silk of these spiders by Kuntner and Agnarsson have revealed it is among the strongest of all known spider silks.