I'm developing a silkworm that spins webs of a particular kind of "silk" and weaves thin, fragile webs. The magic part of this is that it also spins wind. The following addresses how this works and my question.

Info

The silkworms "fold" breezes into the silk, basically funelling the wind into a handwaved sheath that surrounds the silk. The wind rushes freely through the unobtanium sheath, causing it to accelerate rapidly until it's really, really violent. Think a very strong dust devil/mini tornado.

The webs are about 30 cm in diameter.

To make matters worse, the worms fold hot and cold air into opposing ends of the single, closed loop of the web. As the winds move through the web, they dance past each other. But when the web is broken--it's fragile, remember--the sheath of wind also snaps. Then the winds, now moving very very fast, rush into a mini "tornado," encircling their helpless prey. Let us say a strong gale-force wind at 47"“54 mph.

The spinning wind sucks the air out of the vortex, which sucks the air out of the lungs of the prey. The prey falls unconcious and is slammed back and forth by the wind until the wind spins away. Then the creatures, summoned by the sound of the wind, come up to their prey and poison it before eating it.

My Question

What's the best material that satisfies the following critera?

• Fragile but tensile enough
• Can be looped into a single, nonending piece
• Economical for a creature to expend energy producing
• Ensures that, e.g, the tree it's stuck against survives
• Can be made hollow (tubes for support/strength and to make the webs easier to produce)

Keeping in mind the winds released are

• like a very strong dust devil/mini tornado.
• strong gale-force winds at 47"“54 mph.
• and move in "mini-tornado" form.

and the material needs to withstand the force of this wind across its surface

Thank you to all in the Sandbox who helped me develop this question.

Note:

In accordance with this meta post, please do not use magic as an answer (handwavium is reserved for the purposes of wind-weaving, and the magic sheath, not for the purposes of the material used. That's why this is tagged science-based, not magic

posted almost 6 years ago

FoxElemental‭

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