electrostatic spider flight
from fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz on 19 Jul 21:17
https://mander.xyz/post/34313351

www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/…/564437/

theguardian.com/…/ballooning-spiders-take-flight-…

link.springer.com/article/…/s00359-021-01474-6

#science_memes

threaded - newest

chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 21:27 next collapse

Adrian Tchaikovsky warned us of this.

Fredselfish@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 02:34 next collapse

Actually those spiders were pretty damn cool! And it’s an excellent book series.

chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 03:31 collapse

Oh, for sure. I hate spiders, and I was loathe to read it, but damned if I didn’t enjoy all of them.

Cavemanfreak@programming.dev on 20 Jul 06:49 collapse

For a Sci-Fi newbie who’s thinking of trying out Tchaikovsky, any advice on where to start?

chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 07:44 collapse

Start off with the Children of Time series, there’s no reason not to. Well written, great story with memorable characters, and a fantastic hard sci-fi twist on what intelligent life really is, and how we think of ourselves and others.

BennyInc@feddit.org on 20 Jul 11:08 next collapse

Third part is very disorienting however — it took me almost till the end to understand what was going on.

Cavemanfreak@programming.dev on 20 Jul 12:54 collapse

Thanks! I’ll go for that as soon as I’m finished with the Three Body Problem series.

Carl@hexbear.net on 19 Jul 21:35 next collapse

You’ve heard of jumping spiders? Wait till you get a load of the new and improved flying spiders!

nightm4re@feddit.org on 19 Jul 22:03 next collapse

<img alt="" src="https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/64a6adf4-7227-4400-ad4e-4134726b5f99.gif">

PartyAt15thAndSummit@lemmy.zip on 20 Jul 18:01 collapse

Crane flies are a big deal where I live, and especially the ones with reeeeally long legs - longer than anything pictured in the Wikipedia article - just love to come into people’s homes, especially in September.
EDIT: Why is this relevant? When I was a little tyke, I’d constantly mistake them for airborne spiders. Sometimes, they form frigging swarms anywhere where there’s water.

kamenlady@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 22:26 next collapse

This spider is clearly on a mission, it has an objective and won’t let anything get in the way of it.

Iamsqueegee@sh.itjust.works on 19 Jul 23:46 next collapse

Well. Fuck.

GandalftheBlack@feddit.org on 19 Jul 23:58 next collapse

This is how our lizard overlords felt when humans first achieved flight

Nikls94@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 05:06 collapse

Found the crab person

Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de on 24 Jul 13:06 collapse

good news: it’s basically only baby spiders that do it (on account of them being fucking tiny), hence why you haven’t seen tarantulas floating about

iAvicenna@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 23:58 next collapse

flying nope

Deme@sopuli.xyz on 20 Jul 00:25 next collapse

I didn’t know that spiders could get any cooler

Zacryon@feddit.org on 20 Jul 00:50 next collapse

“just”

<img alt="" src="https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/0b43f30b-4065-439c-a610-1dfbcfbbb78e.png">

xylol@leminal.space on 20 Jul 01:06 collapse

Maybe they’ve known about them but haven’t been able to capture them until now

Zacryon@feddit.org on 20 Jul 09:49 next collapse

They’ve observed this in a lab.

Venator@lemmy.nz on 22 Jul 22:36 collapse

Maybe the image is 4 years old too.

Vupware@lemmy.zip on 20 Jul 00:54 next collapse

Hasn’t this been known for some time? Perhaps I’m confusing these spiders with ones that simply form wind sails.

Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 20 Jul 01:17 next collapse

The most recent article in the post is about 4 years old. I definitely recall learning this a while ago.

MeaanBeaan@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 01:31 next collapse

Didn’t the baby spiders fly away at the end of Charlottes Web?

Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca on 20 Jul 02:02 collapse

Yeah, it was chaos on the set just off-camera.

buddascrayon@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 07:00 collapse

If you read any of the article OP provided, you’ll see that the common belief that they were simply using the wind was false and they actually use electric currents in the air.

Bentdreadnot@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 01:11 next collapse

How do the electric fields holds up the scientists?

pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de on 20 Jul 01:34 next collapse

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas.

Evil_Shrubbery@lemmy.zip on 20 Jul 06:58 next collapse

They were bitten by an radioactive electromagnetic spider!

GreenCrunch@lemmy.today on 20 Jul 07:20 collapse

Uhhh, magnets, I assume. I’ve gone through the physics courses, scrapped through intro to electrical engineering, and I still don’t get magnets. So we’ll just go with those.

aeronmelon@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 02:16 next collapse

<img alt="Man holding green posters that say “NO” in giant black letters, throwing one poster to the ground and showing the same poster behind it in a repeated loop." src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/45388df5-bcff-4889-b045-56c5370f57a7.gif">

Evil_Shrubbery@lemmy.zip on 20 Jul 07:10 next collapse

Is this study (afaik published in 2018, but the paper is different to the 2021 one?) distinct from the others? I’m guessing they detailed the “electric” part better?

Edit:
Ohhh, it was about electric fields specifically. The 2018 paper only had airflow, they ar added/experimented with electric fields in the next study (it wasn’t new, just nobody tested it):

However, a recent experiment showed that exposure to an electric field alone can induce spiders’ pre-ballooning behaviours (tiptoe and dropping/dangling) and even pulls them upwards in the air. The controversy between explanations of ballooning by aerodynamic flow or the earth’s electric field has long existed.

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.zip/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.springernature.com%2Flw1200%2Fspringer-static%2Fimage%2Fart%253A10.1007%252Fs00359-021-01474-6%2FMediaObjects%2F359_2021_1474_Fig1_HTML.png">

More from wiki/Ballooning_(spider):

It is observed in many species of spiders, such as Erigone atra, Cyclosa turbinata, as well as in spider mites (Tetranychidae) and in 31 species of lepidoptera, distributed in 8 suborders. Bell and his colleagues put forward the hypothesis that ballooning first appeared in the Cretaceous. A 5-year-long research study in the 1920s–1930s revealed that 1 in every 17 invertebrates caught mid-air is a spider. Out of 28,739 specimens, 1,401 turned out to be spiders.

Although this phenomenon has been known since the time of Aristotle, the first precise observations were published by the arachnologist John Blackwall in 1827. Several studies have since made it possible to analyze this behavior. One of the most important and extensive studies exploring ballooning was funded by U.S. Department of Agriculture and performed between 1926 and 1931 by a group of scientists. The findings were published in 1939 in a 155-page bulletin compiled by P. A. Glick.

It seems more researchers were electrifying spiders (links to older studies):

A 2018 study concluded that electric fields provide enough force to lift spiders in the air, and possibly elicit ballooning behavior.[1], [2]

The Earth’s static electric field may also provide lift in windless conditions.[9], [10] Ballooning behavior may be triggered by favorable electric fields.[11], [12]

Wiki also has a pic from Cho’s paper (2018):

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.zip/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F8%2F8a%2FBallooning_spider_positiv.png%2F1920px-Ballooning_spider_positiv.png">

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.zip/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.springernature.com%2Flw685%2Fspringer-static%2Fimage%2Fart%253A10.1007%252Fs00359-021-01474-6%2FMediaObjects%2F359_2021_1474_Fig2_HTML.png">

TIL:

Some mites and some caterpillars also use silk to disperse through the air.

… also I’m 100% sure the spiders let out a tiny ‘wiiiiii’ when they get airborne …

blackbrook@mander.xyz on 20 Jul 17:02 collapse

But how common are windless conditions, really? It seems incredibly rare that there would be so little air movement that the effect of it wouldn’t far overwhelm the electrostatic effect. I’m no meteorologist, though.

MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip on 20 Jul 11:09 next collapse

Next they figure out that Dandelion chutes actually use charge differences to fly or something.

Maeve@kbin.earth on 20 Jul 11:13 next collapse

I recently heard a lecture that claimed that "halos” or "auras" some people see are humans' magnetic fields. I'd like to see some research on it.

stringere@sh.itjust.works on 20 Jul 14:02 next collapse

You would probably find kirlian photography an interesting read.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian_photography

Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de on 24 Jul 13:08 collapse

i’d be curious how they imagine that works, how do you see electric fields like that?

because, and excuse me for making a truly unorthodox claim here, it seems like the people who believe in auras might be making shit up?

Spacehooks@reddthat.com on 20 Jul 12:03 next collapse

Im imagining Eureka Seven but with spiders riding surfboards instead of mech its spider.

muhyb@programming.dev on 20 Jul 15:21 collapse

Arachnophobia Seven

shalafi@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 17:34 collapse

Pictured is a banana spider, shitloads of them around here. Those are not flying. Looks like this one is making the zig-zag thing some orb weavers make.

Cool fact! They’re also called Golden Orb Weavers because their webs shine gold when the sun hits right.

remon@ani.social on 20 Jul 17:40 collapse

Bananaspider is quite ambiguous and refers to multiple spiders.

Golden Orb Weaver is the common name for Nephila (which this one is not), though often wrongly applied to Argiope.

This one is Argiope cf. aurantia, which has a bunch of common names including “golden garden spider”, but I prefer “black and yellow garden spider”.

because their webs shine gold when the sun hits right.

That is Nephila, not Argiope. Argiope are the ones with the zig-zag pattern, though.