If you happen to be a spiderophobia, it's a bit desperate.
The spider floats into the air with tiny streams of air, and behind this may be the electric field pushing the skill to be unleashed. Photo: thatmacroguy/Shutterstock
There was an eight-legged spider floating in mid-air, looking for a landing spot.
What we do know is that spiders will stand in a raised location, make a small parachute out of spider silk, and ride away in the breeze. This skill is called ballooning.
Spiders fly farther away to avoid predators.
Flying may seem like a very efficient way to migrate long distances, but the problem is that according to the laws of aerodynamics, spiders should not be able to achieve such a large-scale distance crossing just by spider silk and breezes, but surprisingly, even some spiders are found at 16,000 feet above sea level.
Ready to take off: A small spider tiptoes up and releases a piece of spider silk. Photo: Michael HUTCHINSON
A new study suggests that spiders may also be benefiting from electric fields. An electric field is a special substance that exists in the space around the charged and changing magnetic field, and there is an electric field as long as there is an electric charge. Essentially, Earth's atmosphere is a giant circuit, and spiders may be able to fly because they have some kind of device built into their bodies that can detect electric fields.
Eventually, researchers Erica Morley and Daniel Robert from the University of Bristol found that spiders could still fly even when locked in a box without any breeze but controllable electric fields.
Physicist Peter Gorham said: "This discovery is amazing. Although I had known that the electric field played a key role in the flight of spiders, I could only try to prove this through biological speculation. The morley and Robert study clearly points out the answer to this question. ”
Look up at the 5km altitude and see the spider flying. Photo: Ademortuus/Shutterstock
The study, published in the journal Contemporary Biology, shows that electric fields not only trigger a spider's flying skills, but also provide them with lift and speed to glide even without a breeze. So, to understand how spiders fly by electricity, we first need to understand the basic knowledge of the Earth's electric field. The Earth carries its own negative charge, or "grounding" for short; outdoors in ordinary weather, from the flat ground vertically upwards, the potential increases by 100 volts per meter.
Atmospheric potential gradients (APG) are electromagnetic circuits between the Earth and the ionosphere (an ionized region of the Earth's atmosphere) that exist around the world, but their intensity varies greatly. On a calm day it is 100 volts, and in stormy weather it directly increases by two orders of magnitude. Although we know that bumblebees can detect the surrounding electric field and use it to find flowers, researchers have only now discovered that spiders have the same equipment.
When the spider throws out the web, the spider ribbon is negatively charged. The charge repels the same sex, and the spider silk discharges the negative charge of the surrounding object. But the air around the spider silk carries a positive charge, which actually forms a circuit.
The ability to complete the trip using electrostatic repulsion may stem from a special spider induction: the researchers noticed that the tiny hairs on the spider's feet would tremble under the action of an electric field.
Morley said: "There are many kinds of thorns and hairs on the spider, but in the flight that senses the electric field is the spider's trichobothria , only this hair will move around, and the other hairs seem to be motionless." ”
The hairs on the spider's legs can detect sounds, air currents, and even electric fields. Photo: Protasov AN/Shutterstock
Spiders are not limited to perceiving electric fields, but can also weave mini parachutes into the air and even fly out of the experimental box.
For the study, Morley and Robert used a sealed water tank that has formed a stable electric field, thereby eliminating interference from other factors such as air movement. Then they introduced a baby dish spider. They noticed that if the electric field was turned on, the number of occurrences of the spider's flight increased significantly. In addition, if you turn on-off-turn on the electric field while the spider is in the air, you will see the spider moving up and down for a while.
In other words, they can not only detect electric fields, but also use the principles of electric fields and electrostatic repulsion to achieve flight.
Imagine the heights that spiders can reach, and imagine the atmosphere crackling for thousands of volts in thunderstorms. If you happen to be a spiderophobia, it's a bit desperate, because spiders can suddenly fall from the sky.
Tadpole staves compiled from cosmosmagazine, translated by Dog Grid, reprinted with permission
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