Cebrennus Rechenbergi - New Spider Species Rolls Like Tumbleweed And Flips Like An Acrobat
Friday, May 9, 2014 - 00:20
in Biology & Nature
A spider in the Moroccan Sahara rolls like a tumbleweed and can do powerful, acrobatic flips through the air.Cebrennus rechenbergi runs for a short time, then stretches out its front legs, spinning into the air and returning to touch the ground with its hind legs. The move doubles the spider’s speed, to two meters per second. But since it uses so much energy, the maneuver is a last resort, called on only to escape predators. “I can’t see any other reason,” said Peter Jäger, a taxonomist at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, who identified the spider. “It is a costly move. If it performs this five to 10 times within one day, then it dies.” read more