Amazing discovery of spiders using special skill to track and capture mozzies
Video shows spiders listening for a particular sound before launching themselves towards their target.
Mosquitoes make one of the world’s most annoying sounds. But fascinating video reveals how spiders are utilising that high-pitched buzz to track down the insects and capture them.
Ordinarily, a spider will tackle prey after it becomes stuck in its web. But a team of researchers have discovered one species preempts the arrival of the mosquito by listening for the rapid flutter of its wings, then throws its web.
Several aptly named “slingshot spiders” were collected from the wild and then studied in a lab at the University of Akron, in the US state of Ohio. Lead researcher Sarah Han explained to Yahoo News that the spiders, whose scientific name is Theridiosoma gemmosum, can sense sound vibrations through their webs and the tiny hairs on their bodies.
“Spider webs can pick up vibrations from noises across the room,” she said. “It’s not hearing the way we think of it, but it is a way of picking up those same signals.”
The experiment involved attaching the mosquitoes to black pieces of paper and moving them towards the webs. Once the prey was in striking distance, the spider would unleash its slingshot at 1 metre per second, intercepting it within 38 milliseconds.
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Spider behaviour changing through urbanisation
In September, a separate study by Melbourne University found spiders are being impacted by artificial light in our cities. They found evidence that at least one species’ brain was shrinking because it was altering the production of a key chemical in their bodies.
Han said studies into spiders are increasingly revealing how sensitive they are to their environment, and that her study has ramifications beyond the single species she examined. Urbanisation of spider environments could be impacting spider behaviour and web-building in ways that are yet to be discovered.
“Spiders could be using these vibratory or sound cues a lot more than we thought about previously,” Han said.
“The environment could be affecting the behaviour of spiders, even those who don’t actively use their webs. It could be making them choose to build their webs in a certain way. Or maybe they tension their webs differently when they sense play nearby.”
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The study was co-authored by Todd A Blackledge and was published in the journal Experimental Biology.
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