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Ballooning spiderlings image credit: Wikimedia Commons / Little Grove Farms / (CC BY 3.0) |
It could be a scene from a Hollywood horror movie—millions of spiders descending from the sky on to a ship being tossed about on the ocean miles from land. While Hollywood would make them huge, man-eating spiders (and the crew would have to battle to survive the infestation), the real event isn’t scary. Instead, it is incredibly fascinating. It even happened to Charles Darwin on board HMS Beagle, about 100 km (60 miles) off the coast of Argentina in 1832. And it was Darwin’s observations of the spiders’ action that caused a modern-day scientist to consider the possibility that arachnids harness electrostatic energy to ‘balloon’ from point to point. Who hasn’t been ‘zapped’ by static electricity?To read the rest, click on "Charged-up spiders on the move". Also, a short video of the spider trails is below.
University of Hawaii physics professor Peter Gorham challenged existing aerodynamic theories to make the case for electrostatic flight in ballooning spiders by looking at the physics of such actions.
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