How do spiders string long strands and how come it only reflects light at a certain angle?

[humility]

I don't know if this is the right place for this or not but I walked outside and saw a spiderweb that looked to just be floating in mid air. It was a small web with a small spider in it. I took out my flashlight because its 3 AM and really dark and took a look at it to see how it was floating there. First I noticed it had two strands running all the way to the ground. They were really hard to follow because for some reason they only glinted when I shown the light at an upward angle. Why is that?

 

Anyway I then noticed it had a bunch of triangle web strands attaching it to a branch about 5 feet away. Not too weird but then I followed the last strand. And It looks like half the web was supported entirely by a single thread that ran in a straight line to a tree branch easily thirty feet away.

 

And I thought to myself "well how did the spider get its web from here to way over there or vice versa? Did it leap thirty feet? Web shoot spiderman style? Or, and this is the only way I can really picture it, or did it walk thirty feet along the ground slowly releasing web while keeping it taut to keep the strand from touching the sand. Climb up the other tree and anchor it.

 

If so that seems like a really dangerous thing to do. And if it drops its web on the ground, the whole thing is ruined and it has to start over. So why build a web like that instead of just stringing it in the branches? Not like the resulting web was big. Unless all it aimed to catch was human faces.

Edited May 11, 2017 by humility

[Raider5678]

I don't know if this is the right place for this or not but I walked outside and saw a spiderweb that looked to just be floating in mid air. It was a small web with a small spider in it. I took out my flashlight because its 3 AM and really dark and took a look at it to see how it was floating there. First I noticed it had two strands running all the way to the ground. They were really hard to follow because for some reason they only glinted when I shown the light at an upward angle. Why is that?

 

Anyway I then noticed it had a bunch of triangle web strands attaching it to a branch about 5 feet away. Not too weird but then I followed the last strand. And It looks like half the web was supported entirely by a single thread that ran in a straight line to a tree branch easily thirty feet away.

 

And I thought to myself "well how did the spider get its web from here to way over there or vice versa? Did it leap thirty feet? Web shoot spiderman style? Or, and this is the only way I can really picture it, or did it walk thirty feet along the ground slowly releasing web while keeping it taut to keep the strand from touching the sand. Climb up the other tree and anchor it.

 

If so that seems like a really dangerous thing to do. And if it drops its web on the ground, the whole thing is ruined and it has to start over. So why build a web like that instead of just stringing it in the branches? Not like the resulting web was big. Unless all it aimed to catch was human faces.

There are some pretty big spiders buddy.

Plus, they probably floated in the wind.

[Bender]

The spider releases a wire and let it float on the wind. Since it is very light, it doesn't take much of a breeze to travel quite far. As soon as the sticky wire encounters something, it sticks and the spider can tension it. After that, the rest is relatively easy and explained by this picture:

[humility]

Oh okay thanks.

[Daecon]

An an interesting aside, check out some pictures of spider webs produced by spiders exposed to various drugs such as Caffeine or Chloral Hydrate.