Because spiders without feathers can fly and move 'ballooning' to move and use 'electric field'

by Skitterphoto

Studies showed that spiders can withdraw threads from the buttocks, rise to the sky with the help of the electric field, and move "in flight" despite the absence of feathers.

Electric Fields Elicit Ballooning in Spiders: Current Biology
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)30693-6

We Just Found Out Spiders Can Use Electricity to Fly Through The Air
https://www.sciencealert.com/spiders-use-electric-fields-to-fly-balloon-through-the-air-and-migrate

Spiders Use Earth's Electric Field to Fly Hundreds of Miles - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/the-electric-flight-of-spiders/564437/?single_page=true

Spiders may take the action of " ballooning ", sending threads from the buttocks and using it as a parachute to fly in the sky, for example when there is a need for movement.

The state of ballooning can be seen from the following movie.

Spider Ballooning - YouTube


In the Sky "ballooning" or "floating" webs made by young migrating spiders. - YouTube


The spider's ballooning has been known to researchers for a long time, but I realized that the electric field triggers the ballooning behavior and that the ballooning can be done even in the situation that no wind blows by the electric field.

This discovery was made by Erika Morley and Daniel Robert of Bristol University in the UK. "When you hear that you are an organic body flying in the air, you will not normally think of spiders." "But arthropods without feathers have been found in the sky at 4 km and are dispersed to hundreds of kilometers," Researchers write in the paper.

According to researchers, the spider's flight is based on the distribution of the space charge in the atmosphere and the aerial electric field caused by the negative charge of the ground. The air field is also a cause of lightning.

Is it because spiders do ballooning because they use electric fields? The idea of ​​itself was not new, it had already appeared in the 1800s. Charles Darwin who announced the theory of evolution said that he had thought about how hundreds of spiders entered explorers and beagles on a calm day of the sea. Also in 2013 another research group has announced the hypothesis that "electric field is involved in ballooning behavior of at least some spiders", but it seems that there has never been anything actually proved.

by bella 67

Therefore, the two researchers conducted an experiment in the place where "spaces without air movement" or "place where there is no electric field" artificially created capturing spiders called erigone. Then, the team actually observed that spiders began ballooning when the electric field was turned on, and that the static electricity had sufficient power to move the spider. This can be said to be the same principle as rubbing the underlay on the head and lifting up the hair. When turning off the electric field switch, the spider who was caught in the air descended.

Since this research artificially generated an electric field, it has not been experimented whether the same thing will actually occur by the aerial electric field in nature. However, the researchers said that the electric field is related to the spider's ballooning in this experiment "I can say it enough".