Gnaphosids—better known as ground spiders—don't spin typical spider webs. Instead, they catch prey, even those much larger than themselves, by shooting sticky silk to immobilize them, according to a new study in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

This means the ground spiders can actively hunt for their prey, rather than waiting for their meals to get caught in a web.

Jonas Wolff, from Macquarie University in Australia, and a team of researchers became intrigued by ground spiders when observing their silk-producing glands: the ground spiders had fewer, but much larger, silk-producing glands compared to other web-spinning spider species.

Thanks to the large spigots, which allow the silk to be expelled, this means the ground spiders can eject dense layers of the gluey