Ed Yong, "Spiders Can Fly Hundreds of Miles Using Electricity," The Atlantic, July 5, 2018.

The Atlantic |

URL: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/spiders-can-fly-hundreds-of-miles-using-electricity?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Accessed: 28 September 2019

SPIDERS CAN FLY HUNDREDS OF MILES USING ELECTRICITY
Scientists are finally starting to understand the centuries-old mystery of “ballooning.”

By Ed Yong

On October 31, 1832, a young naturalist named Charles Darwin walked onto the deck of the HMS Beagle and realized that the ship had been boarded by thousands of intruders. Tiny red spiders, each a millimeter wide, were everywhere. The ship was 60 miles offshore, so the creatures must have floated over from the Argentinian mainland. “All the ropes were coated and fringed with gossamer web,” Darwin wrote.

Spiders have no wings, but they can take to the air nonetheless. They’ll climb to an exposed point, raise their abdomens to the sky, extrude strands of silk, and float away. This behavior is called ballooning. It might carry spiders away from predators and competitors, or toward new lands with abundant resources. But whatever the reason for it, it’s clearly an effective means of travel. Spiders have been found two-and-a-half miles up in the air, and 1,000 miles out to sea.

This article was originally published on July 5, 2018, by The Atlantic.

Publicado el 28 de septiembre de 2019 a las 04:48 PM por aguilita