How High Do Spiders Fly?
WouterFlying spiders have been known to climb high into the air. They have been observed to travel as far as two and a half miles in the air, or even up to 16,000 feet above sea level.
Researchers have long been fascinated by the mystery of how spiders fly. They have tried to determine how long the strands of silks in a ballooning spider actually take to reach the sky. Until recently, scientists had no clear explanation.
Researchers at the University of Bristol have finally identified the mechanism that allows these insects to fly. They have found that spiders use the Earth’s electric field to propel themselves into the air.
They have also shown that the spiders’ sensing of the electric field is based on tiny sensory hairs called trichobothria.
The researchers modeled the spiders’ flight in virtual simulations, which closely matched results from their real spider experiments. They found that the virtual spiders settled into a steady upward velocity of 8.5 centimeters per second.
The silk lines that are spun by ballooning spiders are extremely thin. They are less than one tenth of an inch thick. The thinness of the silks means that they can carry individual spiders as far as one thousand miles on light wind.
The spiders’ sense of the electric field is a crucial element in their ballooning. It may explain how they can go up to two and a half miles in the air, and how they can get to new locations.
