A ballista spider waits for a green tree ant to bite the cone of its web and spring the snareProfessor Ajay Narendra et al. 2026
A newly discovered spider in Australia builds a snare trap designed to catch a single species of ant, which launches the prey into its web with a g-force that would kill a human.
Researchers have measured accelerations of up to 1367 metres per second squared when green tree ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) trigger the web snare trap, equating to 130 times the force of gravity.
“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,” says Ajay Narendra at Macquarie University in Sydney.
In 2022, Greg Anderson at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia, witnessed a green tree ant being catapulted in a spider trap in the far north of Queensland. But without the proper camera equipment, all he was able to observe was the blur of the prey being lifted ballistically by a strange-looking conical web.
