Spiders are among the most diverse, widespread and successful predators in the animal kingdom, due in part to the versatile powers at their disposal; their feet can scale any surface, their fangs pack corrosive venom and they secrete a highly adhesive substance more powerful than steel. You might think there isn’t much else a spider needs to survive, but many spiders exhibit even more unusual specialization.

1. Web Shooters

Nearly all spiders produce silk from organs called spinnerets on the tip of the abdomen, and need to be able to touch something to wrap it up in webbing. Not so for the genus Scytodes, the “spitting” spiders, who have additional silk glands connected to their mouthparts. Slowly creeping up on unsuspecting insects, the spitting spider squirts twin streams of silk that are even laced with its own venom, waving its streams back and forth to lasso prey in a criss-crossed toxic net.