Some Spiders Can Fly

Some folks do not cotton to spiders, even getting the heebie-jeebies at the tiniest of them. I can understand being skittish with a spider that looks like if you tried to strike it with a tennis racket, it would take it away and strike you instead. Yep, that's alarming. Anyway, some might say, "I'm sure glad spiders can't fly!" Sorry, Sally, but some do fly — in a way. Those shimmering threads are not from UFOs, so Auntie Madge doesn't need to call the Air Force (Project Blue Book has been closed for a long time, anyway), nor are they "chemtrails" Just spiders doing ballooning stuff.

Ballooning spiderlings image credit: Wikimedia Commons / Little Grove Farms / (CC BY 3.0)

Each of a huge number of spiders can shoot out some gossamer and ride the high winds. They don't all have happy landings, though. The survivors, though, hit the ground like special forces leaving their parachutes behind. How do they do this? Sure, the wind is an important part. But another important part involves electrostatic charges! Yet another dumb conundrum for evolutionists to use words like "maybe", "perhaps", "scientists think", and then call it science. Gotta have that homage to Darwin, blessed be. No, the obvious explanation is that they were engineered by their Creator to do this aerial dispersal. After all, spiders defy evolution in other ways, including in the fossil record.

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?

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.

To read the rest, click on "Charged-up spiders on the move". Also, a short video of the spider trails is below.




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