12 ms·
How Spiders Fly
- dang 8y agoThere's a remarkable short film from 1909 about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKPbxcK58aI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKPbxcK58aI. Found via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6427339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6427339.
- grasshopperpurp 8y agoThat's amazing!
- vertere 8y ago> a human hair is just under 100 nanometers in diameter Does he mean micrometres? From wikipedia[0]: > The diameter of human hair varies from 0.017 to 0.18 millimeters (0.00067 to 0.00709 in). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair#Description https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair#Description
- mallomarmeasle 8y agoYes, average human hair is somewhere around 80 microns, based on ethnicity/nationality. See figure 5 here: http://www.jle.com/fr/revues/ejd/e-docs/diversity_in_human_hair_growth_diameter_colour_and_shape._an_in_vivo_study_on_young_adults_from_24_different_ethnic_groups_observed_in_the_five_continents_306744/article.phtml http://www.jle.com/fr/revues/ejd/e-docs/diversity_in_human_h... When I saw this phenomena in person, it was apparent that there was no way that the diameter of the spider silk is close to the diameter of human hair.
- jwilk 8y agoIt looks like the article has been fixed; it now reads: > a human hair is 80,000 to 100,000 nanometers in diameter
- f055 8y agoSo basically, kitesurfing on a thread. Cool. I've seen flying spiders many times in Poland, and it was fun to watch. Especially because it's not a common knowledge they could do that.
- ajuc 8y agoPretty much everybody knows that in Poland? The late summer/early autumn is called "Babie lato" (old women's summer) because of thousands of such threads flying in the air and catching on trees etc.
- SpaceInvader 8y ago"Babie lato" is Ballooning[0] not old women's summer. It has nothing to do with women, even the old ones ;) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballooning_(spider) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballooning_(spider)
- ajuc 8y agoYeah obviosuly, that's why I mentioned it here. I just provided literal translation. It's both a name of the behavior and of that time of year.
- ansgri 8y agoIf it is similar to "Бабье лето" [Babyie leto] in Russian, it is quite literally 'Old Women' Summer'. Didn't know it has anything to do with spiders though.
- stewbrew 8y agoBTW in German, it's called exactly that: Altweibersommer (oldwomensummer).
- seszett 8y agoIn French it's quite different, the threads are called threads of the Virgin. People would say the Virgin is spinning thread. I haven't really noticed that phenomenon in years though now that I live in a city, I wonder if these expressions will just eventually disappear once too few people live in the countryside.
- hellofunk 8y agoCool but this should not be surprising to anyone who has seen a SpiderMan movie. I'm just sayin.
- vanderZwan 8y agoCould you explain how watching a Spider-Man movie would teach us that ultra-thin spider-silk has enough drag to lift a spider up in the air?
- jvm_ 8y agoOr read Charlotte's Web.
- freeflight 8y agoI tend to "catch" those, by accident, quite regularly during certain seasons in Germany, and I'm always a bit torn between being annoyed and amazed at it.
- andai 8y agoSpider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can https://xkcd.com/1415/ https://xkcd.com/1415/
- hellofunk 8y agoUpvote! There’s no reason for nice simple humor to be punished here, is there? Classic HN response, to downvote most attempts at jokes. We’re talking about flying spiders here after all.
- agumonkey 8y agoI'm speechless
- pmontra 8y agoThey do fly and anecdotally they prefer doing it by night. I made an all night bycicle ride days ago and I collected more spider threads than in a whole year of daily rides. I've been wiping the handlebar for all the night. It stopped at the first lights of the day.
- t0mbstone 8y agoI learned this fact from the book, "Charlotte's Web", back when I was 5 years old. Didn't realize it was such an obscure bit of knowledge...