Unique Flying Techniques Allow Spiders to Travel Across Oceans and Seas to Visit You
In the general understanding, flying is the domain of birds and some insects, and humans and other creatures without wings have no way of flying except by riding airplanes. But is this really the case? Birds' bodies and wings allow them to fly for long periods in the air, but there are some rare creatures in nature that can also fly into the sky or to a certain extent. Today, I'd like to introduce you to the flying insects –Spiders
Have you ever seen the scene of Spider-Man using spider silk to shuttle between cities in the movie 'Spider-Man'? But most people don't know that the actual flying ability of spiders is beyond that of Spider-Man. Spiders are flying creatures, and their ability to fly is not a new thing in the scientific community. Darwin mentioned in his 1839 book 'The Voyage of the Beagle' many observations he made during his voyage, including seeing hundreds of small spiders flying and landing on the ship, and the distance between the ship and the land was as much as hundreds of miles.
Spiders' flying method is different from that of birds that fly with wings. They only need to wait for an opportunity and release spider silk to conduct air drifting movement. The principle of spiders' flight has always been a topic of debate in the scientific community, and currently there are two main theories: one believes that the wind is the main driving force, and the other believes that static electricity is the driving force. The wind theory group believes that spider silk is soft and elastic, and when it encounters strong winds, it can be highly bent and used as a parachute to carry the spider into the air. This theory was once supported by most people.
However, the electrostatic faction doesn't think so. They observed that spiders can fly even when there is no wind, so they believe that static electricity is the driving force. It wasn't until the UK released a decisive experiment that the theory was confirmed. Researchers placed spiders in a closed box without air circulation, and arranged an electric field inside. Afterwards, they observed that the fine hairs on the spider's legs were affected by static electricity and stood up like human hair, indicating that the spider felt the changes in static electricity around it. Shortly afterwards, researchers found that spiders could spit silk and take off even in a completely windless state. When they turned off the artificial electric field, the spiders had no flying behavior. Later, researchers found that the electric field could also control the height of the spiders' flight. This decisive experiment overturned the wind theory and proved that static electricity is the main driving force of spiders' flight, while wind is only a supporting and directional control function. Researchers believe that spiders first use static electricity from the global electric field to control the take-off height, and then fly with the wind. This research has changed our understanding of spiders.
In reality, spiders don't often use this skill, so few people have witnessed the scene of spiders flying with their own eyes. Usually only young spiders during the breeding season will use this flying method to leave the activity area of adult spiders to find their new habitats. When the living environment changes and is no longer suitable for them, spiders will conduct large-scale migrations. For example, in Australia, due to excessive rainfall in some areas, some regions were flooded, and later people discovered large-scale spider air drifting migration traces in the flooded areas.
Sometimes you can also see a lot of spider silk in the countryside and fields. These are also the traces left by spiders trying to fly.
