electrostatic spider flight
Submitted 3 weeks ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/dadbb89b-9c59-4f3f-bf69-7a52a3c9ef8e.png
Comments
nightm4re@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
PartyAt15thAndSummit@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
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.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Adrian Tchaikovsky warned us of this.
Fredselfish@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Actually those spiders were pretty damn cool! And it’s an excellent book series.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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 2 weeks ago
For a Sci-Fi newbie who’s thinking of trying out Tchaikovsky, any advice on where to start?
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
Vupware@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Hasn’t this been known for some time? Perhaps I’m confusing these spiders with ones that simply form wind sails.
MeaanBeaan@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Didn’t the baby spiders fly away at the end of Charlottes Web?
Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Yeah, it was chaos on the set just off-camera.
Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
The most recent article in the post is about 4 years old. I definitely recall learning this a while ago.
buddascrayon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
Evil_Shrubbery@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Is this study (afaik published in 2018, but the paper is dated or was amended in 2020?) distinct from the others? I’m guessing they detailed the “electric” part better?
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.
blackbrook@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
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.
Iamsqueegee@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Well. Fuck.
GandalftheBlack@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
This is how our lizard overlords felt when humans first achieved flight
Nikls94@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Found the crab person
Deme@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
I didn’t know that spiders could get any cooler
shalafi@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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 2 weeks ago
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 aurantia, which as a bunch of common names including “golden garden spider”, but I prefer “black and yellow garden spider”.
Bentdreadnot@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
How do the electric fields holds up the scientists?
GreenCrunch@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Uhhh, magnets, I assume. I’ve gone through the physics courses, scrapped through intro to electrical engineering, and i still don’t get magnets
Evil_Shrubbery@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
They we bitten by an
radioactiveelectromagnetic spider!pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas.
Carl@hexbear.net 3 weeks ago
You’ve heard of jumping spiders? Wait till you get a load of the new and improved flying spiders!
kamenlady@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This spider is clearly on a mission, it has an objective and won’t let anything get in the way of it.
iAvicenna@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
flying nope
Spacehooks@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
Im imagining Eureka Seven but with spiders instead of mech its spider.
muhyb@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Arachnophobia Seven
Maeve@kbin.earth 2 weeks ago
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 2 weeks ago
You would probably find kirlian photography an interesting read.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Next they figure out that Dandelion chutes actually use charge differences to fly or something.
Zacryon@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
“just”
Image
xylol@leminal.space 3 weeks ago
Maybe they’ve known about them but haven’t been able to capture them until now
Zacryon@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
They’ve observed this in a lab.
Venator@lemmy.nz 2 weeks ago
Maybe the image is 4 years old too.