After completing the feeding experiment and subsequent re-weighing, we anaesthetized each spider (N = 185 spiders; 38 A. keyserlingi, 40 E. transmarina, 37 L. hasselti, 32 N. plumipes, and 38 P. graeffei) using CO2 and carefully pulled a single MA silk fiber from their spinnerets using tweezers. We collected a thread of silk from eight spiders per treatment per species for the determination of mechanical properties as follows.