Don't be too sure . . .
Like zombies, spiders in a lab twitched back to life hours after "drowning"—and the scientists were as surprised as anyone. The spiders, it seems, enter comas to survive for hours underwater, according to a new study.
Scientists at the University of Rennes in France collected three species of wolf spider—two from salt marshes, one from a forest. The team immersed 120 females of each species in seawater, jostling the spiders with brushes every two hours to see if they responded.
As expected, all the forest wolf spiders apparently died after 24 hours. The two salt marsh-dwelling species took longer—28 hours for P. purbeckensis and 36 hours for A. fulvolineata.
36 Hours !!! That's freaky enough, but it gets better . . .
After the "drownings," the researchers, hoping to weigh the spiders later, left them out to dry. That's when things began to get weird.
Hours later, the spiders began twitching and were soon back on their eight feet.
As I said, do NOT forget to flush.
Now excuse me while I shudder and scratch the tickles crawling up my legs . . .
1 comment:
I had to scratch my ankle after reading that. Earlier today, I was sitting here and a spider spun down from the ceiling and dangled about 1 foot away from me. I grabbed a tissue and tried to grab it. It fell and in this carpet I couldn't see anything. A couple of hours later I thought, if it did die, I'd come back and vacuum up it's remains. As I vacuumed I spotted it. It was between the bed and the desk. I pulled out the hose attachment and sucked the black little creature up. Now my fear is that it will crawl out of the bag and back into the house, eek!
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