Vidyun R Hebbar's Image

This signature spider hung above a roadside and Vidyun watched it every weekend for a month, noticing how it regularly rebuilt its web. These spiders are common in his local area in Bangalore, so Vidyun set out to frame this one against the backdrop of an apartment block. He wanted to show how ‘the spider was living among us in my big city’.

Signature spiders decorate their fine webs with zigzags of silken threads, or stabilimenta, which sometimes resemble letters. The spiders build new webs – with different zigzag ‘signatures’ – every day, usually in supportive vegetation, wherever a foothold can be found. The purpose of these ‘signatures’ could be to advertise the traps, deterring birds from crashing through.