Spiders Have Developed This New Tactic

Post Reply New Topic

Instead of jumping straight down when you try to catch them in a cup, they jump AT YOU to make you back off and scream, and then they crawl away.

How did they manage to figure this out?

You may be observing a different species rather than a new behaviour, but that is not an uncommon development in evolution. It is a tweak on the also common evasive action path. Ma Nature is trying crazy stuff all the time, and if it works, it proliferates.
There is an expression in Texas - "Crazy as a shit-house mouse." This references the motion of a mouse with only one, unsavoury escape path. BTW, If you wish to catch a loose mouse, set up a paper bag along a wall that it will follow, with the opening facing the mouse. Then make it run, and it will hide in the bag, and not see you coming to slap the opening closed.

Hmmm...

maybe the species of spiders in your corner of the UK have indeed evolved a new survival instinct! Maybe the behavior will spread to the rest of that species.

I heard years ago that the way to swat a fly is aim behind it. The fly always jumps backward before launching itself into the air. So if you aim a little behind it you will hit it. And that advice does seem to work.

A reporter once called up over a dozen experts asking how to swat a fly. Only one was quite assertive, and I have found his advice excellent. Approach the fly from two sides at the same time with your hands. It won't be able to decide which way to go until you are within range.

Camel crickets (warning - big picture) do this too. I've encountered a few when walking my dog at night.

Spiders just looking for hugs.

Is that referring to the cartoon you posted a while back?

How do you swat a fly when it's already flying? I know those tiny flys suddenly drop down, but I've never encountered a flying house fly jumping backwards.

And if the fly is on the wall, which way does it jump back if it's about to take off? How much in inches does the fly jump backwards, roughly?

That sounds like a good idea for a spider. Mwahahahahaha...

Gosh!

I had no idea that there would so much breakdown in communication when relating this story!

Nobody swats flies when they are in midair.

I am obviously talking about a fly on the ground (your window sill or desk or wall. ).

The name of the game is to swat it before it takes off again. They fly around and then rest on surfaces. So obviously that's when most folks try to kill them. And when they try to jump back into the air to escape you killing them.

When you raise your hand (or weapon of choice) to swat it your impulse is to either aim for where the fly IS at the moment (aim at it), or to aim a little ahead of it in the reasonable notion that you will hit it where it WILL BE in the next millisecond (because its gonna take off the same moment you're attacking it and will presumably have some forward motion). Kinda like throwing a forward pass in American football (when you're a kid on the playground you tend to aim at the receiver, but then you gradually learn to aim a little ahead of the receiver because he is running).

But though that strategy works with human football receivers it fails when swatting flies because of what I said. The fly jumps BACKWARD a little before leaping into the air.

So you aim behind its tail, and not at it, nor at a point in front of its beady compound eyes as if it were receiving a football from you.

How far behind? I am talking about JUST behind its tail. Pretend the fly is a duck in the water. Don't shoot AT the duck, nor in front of its face. Shoot at the point just behind its tail. Relative to its size it would be equivalent to inches for ducks. But in absolute terms it would be an almost microscopic fraction of an inch. Not measurable in actual whole inches.

Get the picture?

My guess is that scientists set up special movie cams, and strobe lights etc. in a lab. And discovered this thing about flies through special high tech photography.

Like a person swinging a tennis racket backward before swinging it forward to hit a ball. Flies make that backward jump before launching themselves into the air. My whole point was that that move is both too tiny and too fast for normal human vision to detect without a big science grant. You don't (and cant) see flies doing it. But that's the inside secret of how to swat them because that's what they do apparently.

It is not new at all. They are just looking to get a new place to explore. The small size they are, we must look like an easy way to climb up or down to get to where they are going. I doubt they even realize that you are a human!

Kinda like one of our cats. She would climb up a person's body so she could ride around on your shoulder like Long John Silver's parrot. Trouble is that humans, unlike trees, cant endure a cat clawing her way up the human's body. So we had to train her to stop doing that.

I had a spider do that to me a couple years ago. I was worried it had jumped on me but there was no spider on me and after investigating a little bit I saw it in a corner not to far away, probably crawled over there while I was busy frantically making sure it wasn't on me.

Faked you out!

Lept at you before dodging away from you.

Got you focused on your body, and not...where the spider actually was.

Like a pickpocket who distracts you while picking your pocket.

Know your nopes.

One day I was sweeping my kitchen, and noticed a fly moving steadily along within the toe space under my cabinets. On closer inspection, I discovered a spider underneath the toe space, frantically running from my broom, but hauling its fly on a short thread.
On the whole, I prefer spiders to flying insects. If they'd just been developed by genetic engineering, I bet we'd be paying plenty to get 'em.