Spiders skydive to safety

When canopy-dwelling spiders are dropped from great heights, they don't just fall. They skydive.

Earlier in the summer, we learned that spiders can 'sail' on water, lifting their legs, or abdomen to catch the wind and throwing out lines of silk like anchors. Now it transpires that several species of canopy-dwelling spiders in Central and South America are capable of something approaching flight. It looks like they are skydiving.

My favourite part of a scientific paper is the methods section because it reveals the clever, sometimes batty, often funny things that scientists get up to. This new research on spiders, published today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, does not disappoint. In it, the researchers describe how they performed "drop tests" on large arboreal spiders of the genus Selenops. These species look like they've spent several days in a flower press, hence their nickname: "flatties".