***Spiders can not only weave incredible nets. Some can even fly. And it’s their flying that amazed scientists for centuries.***

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Jumping_spider_eyes_1.jpg
**By Karthik Easvur [CC BY-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons**

Usually when we think of spiders flying it’s better to call it kiting – it’s when spider weave a strand and use thermal currents to travel. Using them they can fly even thousands of kilometers. But, some spiders fly even when there is no wind, when it’s overcast and even when it’s raining. How do they do it when the physics say they shouldn’t. Biologists from the University of Bristol think they know. They say spiders use several threads of spider silk at once put into a shape of a fan utilizing the repulsive electrostatic force.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRrUxi6d7so
Electric fields elicit ballooning in spiders
**Source: [University of Bristol YouTube Channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1HX8DWEmVTWj5WNaLd1a_Q)**

The researchers started with two presumptions. First, that wind isn’t enough. Secondly, that has to be something that spiders can detect with some of their senses because there are days when you can find many spiders flying and on some, it’s hard to find even one spider flying. Thus they believe the solution is the Atmospheric Potential Gradient (APG) – the global electric field – a constant in our atmosphere. It’s exactly the APG and other electric fields surrounding matter in various forms that can be detected by insects.

We have long known that spider silk has insulating characteristics. But so far we didn’t know that spiders are capable of detecting are reacting to electric fields. So the scientists took adult Linyphiid spiders and exposed to electric fields analogical to the atmospheric ones and watched what the spiders will do. The experiments show that when the spiders detect an electric field they move upwards. All thus suggests that spiders can fly during no-wind and bad weather thanks to electric fields.

**Sources:**

* http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/spiders-use-atmospheric-electric-fields-to-fly/
* https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)30693-6

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