Spiders can ‘hear’ using their webs, study finds

Looks like ‘spidey senses’ might be a thing after all as scientists have discovered that spiders use their webs to hear. 

In a paper published on Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Binghamton University discovered that orb-weaving spiders can detect sound through minute vibrations on their spiderweb. 

The study also reveals that orb-weaving spiders might be physically tuning their spiderweb strings to detect sounds to look out for like prey or predators.

Orb-weaving spiders are the most common among the eight-legged creatures that are known for building circular wheel-shaped webs often found in gardens, fields, and forests. For example, Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web.

This auditory trick comes in handy as spiders don’t have eardrums putting them at risk of hearing predators or even humans.

Unlike humans and most vertebrates that use their eardrums to convert soundwaves into signals that our brain can comprehend, insects and spiders are essentially ‘deaf’.

Over the years, studies have proven that spiders can sort of hear using the hairs on their legs because the fuzz is sensitive toward nearby sound vibrations.

Researchers collected orb-spiders from windows on the campus of Binghamton University, where the experiments were conducted. 

They put each spider into a rectangular frame within a soundproof room, and waited for the spiders to build their webs. After that, the team played sounds to see whether the spiders would listen and react which they did even when the noise was really low in volume.

The team also found that the spiders were able to accurately detect from which angle the sounds were coming from. 

After analysing the spider webs, the researchers found thay swiftly caught movements of nearby air particles, which were vibrating as a result of the sound waves.

Thus, the team concluded that the orb-weaving spiders could effectively ‘hear’ sounds by standing on the vibrating spider webs.

The researchers also found that while sensing the sounds, the spiders either crouched or stretched on the web meaning that they were actively changing the tension of strands and customising their web to tune-in to specific sounds like a radio. 

‘The real question is, if the web is moving like that, does the spider hear using it?” Ron Miles, a mechanical engineer at Binghamton University and co-author of the study, said in a statement. ‘That’s a hard question to answer,’

To get around this, Miles and co-author Junpeng Lai, conducted a final experiment using a mini-speaker to play sounds for the spiders that almost completely died down in volume before reaching the web, but continued strongly propagating through the webs’ strings as vibrations.

The scientists found that four out of 12 spiders still responded to the extremely weak signal, meaning they could feel the vibrations on the web itself.

While it’s unclear if other types of spiders s exhibited in the same behaviour, the researchers think ‘it’s reasonable to guess that a similar spider on a similar web would respond in the same way’.

‘The spider is really a natural demonstration that this is a viable way to sense sound using viscous forces in the air on thin fibers. If it works in nature, maybe we should have a closer look at it,’ said Miles. 

The discovery could inform the way we design microphones, hearing aids and cell-phones.

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