If spiders creep you out and you suffer from arachnophobia, then perhaps it’s best to move quickly to another fantastic article on Healthy Holistic Living.
However, should you be fascinated by those 8-legged arachnids – please read on.
Friend Or Foe?
Throughout the centuries, humans have had a fear and dislike of spiders. They crawl on our skin and into our hair; hide in dark places and spin their web in hard to reach corners of our homes, where they capture and kill unsuspecting insects that accidentally tread.
Movies and horror films depict them as man-hunters, slaying us in their wake.
But the reality is, spiders can be a great friend and ally. Whilst it’s true most spiders are venomous; of the near 48,000 species, very few can do us harm. Their importance too, is understated. Spiders, as predators, have been used to control insects in rice fields and apple orchards, and have been spotted in vast numbers feeding on insects in various crop fields in North America. (1)
Spiders Can Fly!
They can also fly. Yes, you read that correctly. Though they have no wings, spiders can fly…. In a sense.
English geologist Charles Darwin first noticed the flight of spiders in 1832 whilst aboard HMS Beagle. Noticing the ship had been invaded by thousands of tiny red spiders, the young naturalist delightfully observed the “aeronautic spiders” as they hovered-in, 60 miles from the Argentine mainland. “All the ropes were coated and fringed with gossamer,” Darwin wrote in his diary.
Igniting a web of intrigue within him, Darwin found the pace at which the spiders traveled to be “quite unaccountable” and its cause to be “inexplicable.”
Ballooning
Spiders fly using a technique or behavior called ballooning. They climb to an elevated or exposed point, raise their abdomens, release threads of silk and float away in the gentle breeze, sometimes travelling hundreds of miles and reaching altitudes of over two miles high.
As spiders only balloon in light winds, it’s been a mystery how larger spiders have been able to launch themselves and fly such distances. (2)
Two researchers from the University of Bristol, Erica Morley and Daniel Robert have offered an explanation. They have discovered that spiders can sense the earth’s electrical field. They use it to propel themselves into the air, even on calm windless days. In their study, Morley and Robert used actual spiders.
Generating similar strains of electricity that would occur naturally, spiders were placed on vertical strips of cardboard in the center of a plastic box. The electric fields caused the sensory hairs on the spider’s feet to stand on end. These hairs are called trichobothria and are thought to detect electricity. When these hairs are ruffled the spider lifts its abdomen and begins the ballooning technique. Many of the spiders, despite being in a closed box with no airflow, were able to take off. When the electricity was turned off, the spiders dropped back down. (3)
These same hairs are also thought to detect wind speed or direction, so spiders could potentially use air currents such as the Gulf Stream to make their ascendancy.
So next time you find a spider in your hair or crawling on your hat – fear not – it may have just flown there… and it’s using you as a landing strip or runway!
