The mathematics of prey detection in spider orb-webs

Spider webs are one of nature's most fascinating manifestations. Many spiders extrude proteinaceous silk to weave sticky webs that ensnare unsuspecting prey who venture into their threads. Despite their elasticity, these webs possess incredible tensile strength. In an article publishing this week in the SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, Alexandre Kawano and Antonino Morassi present a theoretical mechanical model to study the inverse problem of source identification and localize a prey in a spider orb-web.