Spiders are undeniably odd creatures. They pull silk from their rear ends, have multiple eyes that still somehow don’t work all that well, and they manage to not get caught in the webs that snare everything else. Now, researchers from the Universities of Oxford, Strathclyde, and Sheffield have discovered yet another remarkable spider fact: They listen to the sound created by “plucking” their webs to learn everything from the presence of prey to the web’s structural integrity.

“Most spiders have poor eyesight and rely almost exclusively on the vibration of the silk in their web for sensory information,’ said Beth Mortimer of the Oxford Silk Group at Oxford University, who led the research. ‘The sound of silk can tell them what type of meal is entangled in their net and about the intentions and quality of a prospective mate. By plucking the silk like a guitar string and listening to the ‘echoes’ the spider can also assess the condition of its web.”

In order to discern so much information from such a seemingly fragile structure, individual silk strands hate to be able to transmit a wide range of frequencies. What’s more, spiders are very much aware of this capacity: They’ll “tune” their webs, varying both the properties of individual silk strands and the tension and connectivity that makes up the web as a whole.

To find this out, the researchers tested spider webs by firing bullets (yes, bullets) at them and recording their resonance via high-speed cameras. Lasers were also used to detect even smaller vibrations, and probably also to give a more official air to an experiment that largely consisted of firing guns at spider webs.

This is yet another accolade heaped onto spider silk. The silk has long been known for its incredible strength-to-weight ratio, but now it also appears to be a viable method of transmitting minute, sensitive information.