How spiders fly - fascinating science!

For everything that we have achieved in science, and the confidence that comes with those advances, there is still so much to be discovered. In the future we will look back at our wondrous technology of today and laugh at how we managed with such primitive tools.

Most people don’t know it, but spiders can fly. Not jump, actually fly. They have been found landing on ships 1000 miles out to sea, like migrating birds.

Until recently, we had no idea they did this. Yep, we can fly to mars but had no actual scientific explanation for how a spider with no wings can fly. All we knew was that spiders climbed to a high point, raised their legs to the sky, pulled out some strands of silk and then…… just floated away.

A team at Bristol University seems to have an explanation and it is fascinating. The spiders can feel the electric field around the earth (think of all the electricity from lighting in the sky. The ground has a negative charge, which becomes positive as you rise into the sky. When spiders climb a tree, which is grounded, the branches have the negative charge of the ground and so do the silk strands they pull out, but the air is more positively charged. The negatively charged silk is repelled by the negatively charged branch, with enough force to lift the spider into the air. Add a light wind and the spider is off and away.

Could this be a technology for us to use?