Ballista Spider Catapult Uses Prey's Aggression Against Itself

In the rainforests of Queensland's Cape York Peninsula, a small nocturnal spider has been solving a problem that would stump most predators: how do you eat an ant that will swarm and destroy you if given half a second to react?

Researchers discovered a spider of the genus Propostira, which they're calling the ballista spider, in those same tropical rainforests. It constructs a spring-loaded snare triggered by a single kind of prey: the highly territorial and aggressive green tree ant (Oecophylla smaragdina). The thinner silk of the web appears to attract worker ants and provoke an attack response, possibly via pheromones. The ants arrive and bite the cone. The bite detaches it from the surface, and the ant is pulled up and propelled into the core web in a fraction of a second. The ant triggers its own capture.

The launch occurs in about 42 milliseconds, subjecting the ants to nearly 15 times the G-force experienced by jet pilots. A kilogram of web would store 78.17 kilojoules of kinetic energy and briefly exert 11.73 megawatts of power. That force has likely evolved to yank ants away from the vicinity of their nests and trails before fellow ants can respond.

The ballista spider is the only known spider to hunt just one species of prey. Researchers believe the spiders evolved this hyper-specialized, labor-intensive strategy because green tree ants are abundant, with up to 5 million workers in a single arboreal nest, and available year-round.

The species doesn't have a formal name yet. The trap works anyway.

Read the full story at The Lighthouse, Macquarie University, June 23, 2026

Hot Take: A spider that built a catapult tuned to one species' aggression and uses that aggression as the trigger mechanism is doing something most athletes never manage: it turned the competition's strength into a liability.