Stories in the Amber

These recently hatched spiderlings might have been on the verge of "ballooning" when they were trapped. Ballooning is a technique young spiders use to travel long distances quickly. Spiderlings climb to an exposed location and begin generating silk threads. When the threads reach a certain length, the wind lifts both them and the spiderlings aloft before dropping them to the ground again some distance away. Experts have collected some spiders thousands of feet in the air, showing how successful this tactic can be.