Secrets of flying spiders revealed by scientists – Science & Health

There are flying spiders. Flying spiders do not have wings or even skin stretched between fingers spread like bats, but they can travel hundreds of kilometers even when there is no Wind.

At least a few flying spiders make an aerial journey by landing on a springboard, which may be something of a peak from a flower, raising their several silk threads that look like fragile fans. Unlike their canvas, this makeshift balloon remains attached to their funds. Then they are carried away by the wind.

Or not. This had been the hypothesis until it was noticed that these avid arthropods can reach air locomotion on days without wind.

And fly, they do it on quiet days. This probably helps that most species of flying spiders are tiny, which seems like a good thing until you consider that unless you have a sharp view, you will not see them. , although Europe is filled with little things that fly mainly in autumn.

Anyway, the wind alone can not predict bloat or observation trends completely, hinting at the implication of other factors, co-author Prof. Erica Morley, who studies sensory systems in insects and spiders, says Haaretz.

"The hot air balloon is very widespread and frequent, passing largely unnoticed," she says – explaining that most of the flying spiders are very small, a few millimeters in length.

These are the big ones of a whole centimeter long where things become mysterious. Light winds alone can not explain how these beefier spiders fly away, says Morley.

In addition, flying spiders only inflate in a light breeze with wind speeds of less than 3 meters per second . All breezier than that and they do not even try. And there's more.

"The fact that the balloon was observed when there is no wind, when the sky is overcast and even in rainy conditions, begs the question: how do spiders take off with a weak trail aerodynamic?" Asked Morley and Daniel Robert of the University of Bristol, writing in Current Biology.

In short, current theories have failed to predict hot air balloon trends using only the wind as the engine, Morley explains. Some days, big numbers take air and on others, spiders stay put and do not even try, she says.

The moment of the eureka was in the very fanatical form of the spider balloon: this gave the biologists the idea that a repulsive electrostatic force could be involved. In other words, the atmospheric electricity.

The higher the elevated level of the ground level, the greater the electrical potential gradient. According to the great physicist Richard Feynman, on an ordinary day, as one rises from the surface of a flat land or water, the electric potential increases by approximately 100 volts per meter.

Many insects can detect electrical gradients. Bumblebees can detect the fields of electricity between them and the flowers, and bees can use the electric charge to communicate with the hive, say Morley and Robert.

Flying spiders are not insects, they are arthropods, closer to shrimps than fruit flies. So the comparison may be a little stretched.

But the fact is that in experiments where Linyphiida flying spiders were exposed to electric fields quantitatively equivalent to those found in the atmosphere, the spiders stole.

Field switching on the spider caused to go up. By disabling the field, the spider has moved down. Scientists have shown that arachnids can become airless in the absence of air movement when subjected to natural electric fields.

Many species with this special quirk are the type that weave what are called "leafy" fillets.

Why would spiders disperse so powerfully, anyway? Left alone by thousands at a time, even though most spiders are not social beings?

"One motivation for wanting to disperse might be the density of other spiders or newborns, which has not been examined in our work," says Morley.

What if Spider does not want to move? They do not know if the electric field moves the spider whether it likes it or not. "We know that electric fields are enough to allow bloating, but we do not yet know how it works in their natural environment," Morley told Haaretz.

They also do not know if, in the absence of wind, a natural spider herd, or whatever it is called, moves away in a direction or is explodes everywhere, a delicious thought. Their experiments were done in the lab, Morley points out.