Spiders, who knew?

[BBob]

Well I’ll be! I’m sure we’ve all seen spiders in the sky floating merrily along hanging off a thread of silk but who knew they actually fly on the currents of the earths electrical field instead of just being blown around by the wind? Pretty wild if you ask me

Spiders fly on the currents of Earth's electric field

Spiders don’t have wings, but they can fly across entire oceans on long strands of silk. For more than a century, scientists thought it was the wind that carried them, but a new study shows the Earth’s electric field can propel these flying arachnids too.

www.pbs.org

 

[survivalistd]

Awesome read!!

 

[ReddingArcher]

Super interesting, thanks for posting!

 

[EastHumboldt]

That was very interesting. Thanks for posting. What a crazy and beautiful universe we live in.

 

[TaperPin]

Great article!

 

[ODB]

Neat stuff. It has always been a wonder to me how animals like that have memory of how to “be” when they grow up outside of the influence of their parents or, as in the case of my favorite bird, the Greater Honeyguide, that are raised by foster parents. Truly amazing.

 

[Dos Perros]

I love it in the afternoon/evening when the light is right and you're glassing off a tripod and you can see all the filaments of webbing floating through the air, and the light sometimes catches the geometric surface and it shines, and how it changes shape and flows like a lava lamp moving through the sky.

 

[dr.mooseknuckles]

I love it in the afternoon/evening when the light is right and you're glassing off a tripod and you can see all the filaments of webbing floating through the air, and the light sometimes catches the geometric surface and it shines, and how it changes shape and flows like a lava lamp moving through the sky.

I'll have to try glassing stoned this coming November too!

 

[Poser]

That's wild!

 

[P Carter]

I'll have to try glassing stoned this coming November too!

This is legit - one evening, I was settling in to glass, and noticed thousands upon thousands of spiders silently ballooning for the whole evening. It's one of the cooler experiences I've had out there--a whole other world I had never seen, nor heard about, and it was a complex behavior but totally and completely silent.

The other was being in the middle of a monarch butterfly migration as a "tube" of monarchs, maybe 20 yard wide and 20 yards tall, silently flowed up the ridge, right around me, and down the other side of the ridge, maybe 6-10 feet in the air. The column was maybe 10 minutes long, silently came, silently went. It was unreal.

 

[dr.mooseknuckles]

This is legit - one evening, I was settling in to glass, and noticed thousands upon thousands of spiders silently ballooning for the whole evening. It's one of the cooler experiences I've had out there--a whole other world I had never seen, nor heard about, and it was a complex behavior but totally and completely silent.

The other was being in the middle of a monarch butterfly migration as a "tube" of monarchs, maybe 20 yard wide and 20 yards tall, silently flowed up the ridge, right around me, and down the other side of the ridge, maybe 6-10 feet in the air. The column was maybe 10 minutes long, silently came, silently went. It was unreal.

Oh I don't question Dos Perros, nor do I question the occurrence of ballooning spiders. His description of the scene brought to mind marijuana thoughts.

 

[atmat]

I love it in the afternoon/evening when the light is right and you're glassing off a tripod and you can see all the filaments of webbing floating through the air, and the light sometimes catches the geometric surface and it shines, and how it changes shape and flows like a lava lamp moving through the sky.

When rednecks become poets.10 outta 10 cool experience though.

 

[Marbles]

Cool, thanks for sharing.

 

[Rotnguns]

Well I’ll be! I’m sure we’ve all seen spiders in the sky floating merrily along hanging off a thread of silk but who knew they actually fly on the currents of the earths electrical field instead of just being blown around by the wind? Pretty wild if you ask me

Spiders fly on the currents of Earth's electric field

Spiders don’t have wings, but they can fly across entire oceans on long strands of silk. For more than a century, scientists thought it was the wind that carried them, but a new study shows the Earth’s electric field can propel these flying arachnids too.

www.pbs.org

Thanks for sharing this amazing and informative article!

 

[7mm-08]

Super interesting read. Thanks for posting.

 

[AustinC0222]

Super interesting, great article.