Spider-Man’s ‘Spidey Sense’ just got kicked up a notch as a newly released scientific study suggests that spiders can ‘hear’ through their web designs.
Spiders have been found to effectively hear predators and prey thanks to intricate ‘tuning’ systems using web strings.
Orb-weaving spiders can use the minute vibrations felt through the web and thus help them detect sounds and react accordingly. And these sounds, the New York Binghampton University study suggests, are picked up by hairs on the arachnid’s legs.
Insects are literally deaf due to them lacking eardrums, but spiders instead use highly sensitive hairs to pick up local vibrations such as sound from their webs.
As part of the research, orb-spiders were collected from windows on the campus of the university and they were each given time to build a web within a soundproof room.
The team would then play sounds into the room, to which the spiders reacted accordingly. The spiders were also found to detect where the sound is coming from. Four of twelve spiders even responded to the extremely weak signal through web detection.
The spiders would change body positions in order to alternate the tension of the web. This ‘tuned’ the web so the spider was able to hear specific sounds, in a way humans would tune a radio.
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