Spider Revolutions
Henschel, Joh, Natural History
A strobe of sky-blue alternating with dune-red flashes past the spider's eyes twenty times a second as it hurtles down a dune. With its eight legs neatly tucked in, so that one set of joints points outward to form a circle, the spider has become an upright wheel, rolling down the steep sand slope with tremendous speed. Near the top of the dune, its archenemy, a pompilid (or spider) wasp searches in vain for its quarry, which has suddenly disappeared.
In 1977, when David Hughes and Anthony Bannister first filmed the wheel spider's behavior in the Namib Desert of southern Africa, they postulated that it might allow the spider to escape attacking wasps. Wondering if predators could …
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Publication information:
Article title: Spider Revolutions.
Contributors: Henschel, Joh - Author.
Magazine title: Natural History.
Volume: 104.
Issue: 3
Publication date: March 1995.
Page number: 36+.
© American Museum of Natural History Dec 2008/Jan 2009.
Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.
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