After the spider, Zygiella x-notata Cl. has been enticed to leave the retreat and catch a fly in a web turned upside-down, it takes a relatively long time to return to the retreat. The return-time is divided into periods of active searching and motionlessness. Several factors have been found to shorten significantly the searching and motionless time; among them are youth of the animals, small number of webs previously built, the position of the web before and between experiments, and repetition of trials at certain time intervals. The observed phenomenon and variations in time are explained in terms of current concepts of memory function and information processing.