A study led by a University of Nottingham expert describes how some spiders can swim across water.
Professor Sarah Goodacre, Head of the Spider Lab at The University of Nottingham, has teamed up with Dr Morito Hayashi who is based at the Natural History Museum in London.
Together the experts have revealed how some spiders use water tension, wind and their legs as a rudder to propel themselves across water.
We thought water was a serious problem for them, that they couldn’t cross water barriers and it turns out that’s probably not true.
Professor Sarah Goodacre, Spider Expert.
The results were published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.
For the research Sarah would drop the spiders onto a tray with shallow water and puff slight gusts of air onto the spiders.
Video: Professor Sarah Goodacre explains her findings.
Sarah has not tried her research on bigger spiders, like the tarantula she keeps in her lab, but she says the best flying spiders are little money spiders.
