Nature is just one big arms race. You evolve thicker skin, they evolve bigger teeth. So while we at Cracked like to regularly terrify our readers with tales of all the frightening creatures we share the planet with, we should always keep one thing in mind:

6 The Spider That Builds an 80-Foot Web

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Imagine you're riding your bicycle down the middle of an empty, wide-open street when suddenly your face is tangled in a spider web. We're talking about a web that spans the entire distance between two buildings, like the freaking aftermath of a Spider-Man chase scene.

Congratulations, you somehow have a Darwin's bark spider in your neighborhood. This species has been known to build webs that span freaking rivers. The largest one found was 82 goddamned feet across. If that sounds far-fetched to you, you're just like scientists in 2009 before they discovered the thing. You'd think that an 82-foot spider web, stretching across rivers like a fishing net designed to catch kayakers, would be the sort of thing that'd be hard to miss. Or maybe "come out of hiding" is phase one in the bark spider's plan.

plosone

Perfect for clotheslining a Jet Skier.

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Either way, you really do have to admire how spiders are always raising their game. After all, it's more or less a rule that any list of creepy, dangerous or messed-up creatures is going to have at least one spider on it, since that is the animal Satan created when God was napping.

The Darwin's bark spider spins both the largest and the strongest web of any spider known. Experts think it's entirely possible this spider's web can catch birds. They just haven't seen it happen yet.



"I could sure as hell go for some chicken right now, I'll tell you that much."

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Their webs can get to be about the length of two buses and can easily bridge rivers without even giving a shit. In order to support the weight of all that web and the struggling, dying life-forms caught in it, the webbing has to be incredibly strong. In fact, it's one of the strongest materials known to man -- 10 times stronger than Kevlar.