These circular creations are made by a class of spiders called orb weavers that includes lots of common garden spiders.
This golden orbweaver spider has seven kinds of silk glands, and each one creates its own liquid protein (called spidroid).
Once the structural supports are in place, the spider starts on the outside and spirals inward, attaching each segment of silk and coating the strands with a sticky substance.
This St. Andrew’s cross spider has gone the extra mile to weave a special pattern, called a stabilimenta, into its web.
Spider researchers (arachnologists) originally thought that stabilimenta added stability to webs, which is how the decorations got their name.
The trashline orbweaver doesn’t have a typical aesthetic sense—it wraps up poop, leftover pieces of prey, and other debris in a straight line.
A spider found in 2012 in the Peruvian Amazon uses its trash in a more elaborate way, creating what looks like a decoy spider that hangs in its web.
This feather-legged lace weaver has an unusual method of catching prey: It spins super-tiny strands of silk from an organ called a cribellum that most spiders don’t have.