Nature & Environment

Do spiders possess 'super powers' ?

By T.K. Randall
October 26, 2014 ·  22 comments

Spiders could put even the toughest superheroes to shame. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 2.0 Konrad Summers Spiders might not be the most popular members of the animal kingdom, but when you look closer at what they are actually capable of they really are quite remarkable.

There are two main categories of spiders, web builders and hunters. Web builders are generally slower and rely on building webs and waiting for prey to come to them while hunter spiders are typically quicker on their feet and rely on their relatively good eyesight to locate prey themselves.

These skills might not sound impressive at a glance but if you scaled a spider up to the size of a human its abilities suddenly become comparable to those of a comic book superhero.A jumping spider for instance is able to jump a distance that's 50 times the length of its body, the equivalent of a human jumping the length of a football field in a single leap.

Some spiders can run 70 times their body length in a second - that's 10 times faster than Olympic champion Usain Bolt. Spiders can also manage extreme feats of strength, capable of carrying 170 times their own body weight while hanging upside down.

That's the equivalent of a human carrying a double decker bus while walking on the ceiling.

Source: BBC News | Comments (22)

Tags: Spiders