neville park
Ooh. Some cool new research on slingshot spiders (_Theridiosoma gemmosum_).
"Saad Bahmla (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) and colleagues, including Todd Blackledge (University of Akron, USA), discovered in 2021 that they could trick the wily arachnids into releasing their ballistic nets by simply clicking their fingers. Might the weapon-wielding spiders be listening to deploy their webs even before their victims have blundered into them? Sarah Han, also from the University of Akron, and Blackledge decided to test the spiders’ reactions […]
"Sure enough, the spiders let loose their webs when the flapping mosquitoes were in the vicinity. But when Han took a closer look at the movies they had recorded, it was evident that the insects never touched the webs with their protruding front legs. The spiders were capable of launching the structures even before an insect impacted the web. And when Han tried the same trick, but this time waving a tuning fork, pitched at the tone produced by the flies’ whining wings, in front of the web, the arachnids still released their webs to rocket forward. The spiders must have been listening for the approaching insects, letting loose their webs when the mosquitoes were in range, before the insect had blundered into it."
Article (like normal people newspaper style article, not a scholarly article): https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/23/jeb249732/363194
Paper: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/23/jeb249237/363202 
#Arachnews #OpenAccess #arachnids #spiders #SpiderBehaviour • #Araneae #Theridiosomatidae
