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We know that spiders can detect prey in their webs through web vibrations picked up by their sensitive legs. Now they also seem to be able to hear with this web.
Many animals on Earth have eardrums in their ears that pick up vibrations from the air. These vibrations are then transmitted and amplified through the bony structures, eventually moving fluid deeper into the ear. Tiny cilia in the liquid pick up this movement and convert it into electrical signals that go to the brain.
In recent research, researchers looked at what spiders do in the lab when air vibrations hit their webs. They saw that the spiders changed body position and direction in response to sounds. Even if she came from afar. They responded at 68 dB, while their main enemies – crickets, birds and frogs – quickly produced 80 dB of noise. This suggests that spiders can hear their enemies from 10 meters away.
If the results are confirmed, it would mean that spiders also use their webs as an external eardrum. It wouldn’t be the animal’s first intelligent hearing solution, for example, another species of spider listens with the hairs on its legs. In any case, it shows that we still don’t know everything about the special material and the functionality of the spider web.
Read more: Externalized hearing in an orb spider that uses its web as a hearing sensor (preprint).
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