Scientists have long wondered how spiders can use the webbing they make to fly.The 19th century English naturalist Charles Darwin commented on their behavior when very small spiders landed on his ship, the HMS Beagle. He noted that they were following lines of smooth silk. He thought the creatures might have been using warm air to take to the sky. However, new research shows a totally different cause may be involved.

Erica Morley and Daniel Robert are with the University of Bristol in Britain. They were interested in exploring another explanation for the spiders’ ability. They thought spiders might sense and use electrostatic fields in the air.

Morley told VOA: “There have been several studies looking at how air movement and wind can get spiders airborne, but the electrostatic hypothesis was never tested.”

But some observers suggested electrostatic fields might be the reason the many draglines some spiders use to float never get tangled.

Kimberley Sheldon is a biologist with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in the United States. She said that although “these spiders will have 5 or 6 draglines, those strands of silk do not get entangled. So, we've known for a while that electrostatics probably [are] at least interacting with the spider, with the silk lines themselves to keep them from getting tangled.”

Aliqismet BADALOV,
“Khalq qazeti”