Spider Silk—Amazing Uses
Bodie Hodge, M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI
Biblical Authority Ministries, August 11, 2026 (Donate)
Spiders...can be scary! This is especially true when dealing with spiders that have serious venom. I was once bitten by a brown recluse, and the next two weeks were a horrible experience. Even after I was over the worst of it, I had a hard, black knot on my inner right thigh where I was bitten that remained for over a year.
Spiders, in our sin-cursed and broken world, can definitely
cause us problems. Some spiders possess venom, and many spiders capture and
consume other creatures. Yet we can also see remnants of the remarkable beauty
and design in these creatures—a reminder, if you will, of the perfect works of
God (Deuteronomy 32:4) and the "very good" world He originally made
(Genesis 1:31).
After Adam sinned and the Curse came in Genesis 3, suffering
and death became realities in this broken world. Romans 8:20-22 describes
creation as subjected to futility and groaning under corruption. This condition
won’t last forever. Christ will return, and ultimately there will be new
heavens and a new earth in which the Curse is removed (Revelation 21-22).
Even in this fallen world, however, God's incredible design
can still be seen. Spiders, especially their silk is a wonderful example.
Spiders' Original Diet
According to Genesis 1:29-30, God originally gave plants[1]
for food to mankind and to the animals. Since there was no death of living
creatures (nephesh chayyah in Hebrew) before sin, spiders wouldn’t
originally have killed and eaten insects or other animals. Whatever their
original diet consisted of, it would have been consistent with God's "very
good" creation.
Interestingly, spiders can consume plant-derived material
today. Pollen and other plant materials can become trapped in spider webs, and
researchers have documented spiders eating from these plant-based sources. This gives us
an interesting glimpse into possibilities that are often overlooked when people
assume spiders must always have lived exactly as they do today.
Spider webs are remarkably effective at capturing tiny
airborne particles—particularly pollens and fine plant debris. Their
usefulness, however, goes far beyond catching food.
That Amazing Spider Silk
Spider silk is an intriguing material. It combines several
characteristics that make it extremely useful—not just for spiders! Depending
upon the particular type of silk produced by a spider, it can be strong,
lightweight, flexible, elastic, sticky, or comparatively non-sticky.
In fact, a single spider may produce different kinds of silk
for different purposes—out of its same little silk micro-factory! Silk can be
used for the structural framework of a web, sticky capture threads, egg sacs,
safety lines, shelters, and other functions.
One spider even uses silk to make an air bubble “bag” and
dives under water! It is the Diving Bell Spider (Argyroneta aquatica).
Think about the amount of information necessary for this biological
system to work in the spider to make silk. The spider must produce the
appropriate proteins, then it needs to manufacture silk within its body, move
the material through specialized structures called spinnerets, and use it once
it comes out.
The silk itself is only a very small part of the whole system!
Wow! The spider must also possess the instinctive God-given behaviors necessary
to put the material to use and not trap itself.
Building Remarkable Structures
Perhaps the most familiar use of spider silk is the
construction of webs. The classic orb web, with its beautiful circular pattern,
is an impressive engineering structure.
But not every spider builds an orb web. Different
spiders use silk to build sheets, funnels, tubes, tunnels, retreats, and other
structures. Some spiders use silk to line burrows into the ground—and even has
trap doors! Others construct shelters where they can hide. Silk may also be
used to protect eggs by enclosing them within an egg sac.
The diversity of these structures reminds us that
"spider web" actually describes an enormous variety of designs. Though
of course, some of this might be attributed to cursed design—nevertheless,
it still shows the brilliance behind it.
Flying With Silk
Spider silk can even be used for transportation! Young
spiders frequently disperse through a behavior commonly called
"ballooning." A spider climbs to an elevated position, releases
strands of silk, and can fly when the wind comes and snatches it. In this way,
tiny spiders can travel away from where they hatched and spread into new areas
where they can thrive.
They don’t have wings, yet their silk provides them with an
ingenious means of traveling through the air—like a “tiny parachute” or “air
balloon”.
A material produced by the spider's own body can therefore
function as construction material, a safety line, a protective covering, and
even a means of transportation.
Catching Pollen And Dew
As mentioned, spider silk is also effective at snagging tiny
materials in the environment. Airborne pollen—which is very small—can become
caught on webs and eaten; but also, tiny droplets of dew water can collect
along strands of silk. Spiders even drink a little water too!
Anyone who has walked outside on a cool, damp morning has
probably seen a spider web covered with dew. Hundreds of tiny droplets can
outline a web that was nearly invisible only hours earlier.
Such sights display both beauty and remarkable physical
properties. An incredibly thin strand of silk can withstand stretching, wind,
moisture, and movement while maintaining the web's overall structure.
Of course, in our present sin-cursed world, webs are also
commonly used to capture insects and other creatures for food. Predation and
death remind us that we don’t live in the original "very good"
creation of Genesis 1. Creation itself bears the effects of man's sin and this
shows in a small way why we desperately need a Savior in Jesus Christ.
Hummingbirds Use Spider Silk Too!
One of the most fascinating uses for spider silk doesn’t
involve spiders directly at all. Hummingbirds gather strands of spider silk and
incorporate them into their nests. The silk helps bind nesting materials
together—which allows it to be flexible. This is especially useful because baby
hummingbirds grow rapidly.
Instead of constructing a completely rigid nest, the
hummingbird uses flexible materials, like the spider silk, that allow the nest to
expand to accommodate the growing chicks. Brilliant, eh?
Think about the remarkable relationship involved here. A
spider manufactures an extraordinarily lightweight and elastic material, and a
completely different creature can collect that material and use it as part of
its own construction project.
Spiders just make more—they make immense amounts of silk as their webs commonly get damaged by wind and debris over and over again—so waste web is common. This shows just one example where spider silk benefits more than spiders. (See this great documentary on hummingbirds here.)
Conclusion: More Than Just a Web
When we see a spider web, it is easy to think of it merely
as a trap for insects. But spider silk is capable of much more (and I only scratched
the surface here!).
Spider silk is lightweight yet strong. It can stretch,
stick, support, protect, transport, and bind. It can form an orb web. It can
line a tunnel. It can make an egg sac. It can create a safety line. It can help
a young spider travel through the air. It can collect pollen, moisture, and
other tiny particles. It can provide shelter. It can stretch without
immediately breaking.
It can even become construction material for the nest of a
hummingbird. Different spiders use it in different ways, and even other
creatures such as hummingbirds can make use of it. All of this comes from
strands so thin that we can easily walk through a web without noticing it until
it touches our face!
Spiders can certainly remind us that we live in a fallen
world. Venom, predation, injury, suffering, and death weren’t part of God's
original "very good" creation. These things point us back to the
entrance of sin and the Curse in Genesis 3. Thus, spiders remind us of
something else: God's creation remains filled with extraordinary design—a reminder
of a world without sin.
The next time you see a spider web covered with morning dew,
instead of seeing merely a place where a spider catches insects, look a little
closer. You are looking at an extraordinary material produced by an
extraordinary, though sometimes a scary-looking, creature.
The creation is no longer the perfect world of Genesis 1,
but remnants of God's original handiwork are still all around us. They should
point us back to our Creator and forward to the day when Christ makes all
things new and "there shall be no more curse" (Revelation 22:3).
Bodie Hodge, Ken
Ham's son in law, has been an apologist defending 6-day creation and opposing
evolution since 1998. He spent 21 years working at Answers in Genesis as
a speaker, writer, and researcher as well as a founding news anchor for Answers
News. He was also head of the Oversight Council.
Bodie
launched Biblical Authority Ministries in 2015 as a personal
website and it was organized officially in 2025 as a 501(c)(3). He has spoken
on multiple continents and hosts of US states in churches, colleges, and
universities. He is married with four children.
Mr. Hodge earned a
Bachelor and Master of Science degrees from Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale (SIUC). Then he taught at SIUC for a couple of years as a
Visiting Instructor teaching all levels of undergraduate engineering and
running a materials lab and a CAD lab. He did research on advanced ceramic
materials to develop a new method of production of titanium diboride with a
grant from Lockheed Martin. He worked as a Test Engineer for Caterpillar,
Inc., prior to entering full-time ministry.
His love of science
was coupled with a love of history, philosophy, and theology. For about one
year of his life, Bodie was editing and updating a theological, historical, and
scientific dictionary/encyclopedia for AI use and training. Mr. Hodge has over
25 years of experience in writing, speaking and researching in these fields.
*Image generated by
ChatGPT
[1]Plants
aren’t considered living in a biblical sense. They are more like solar powered,
self-replicating biological machines for the purposes of cleaning air,
producing oxygen in balance, providing food and medicines, and building
materials (and so on).
