Meet the Spider With One of the Fastest Spins on the Planet

When this spider senses its prey approaching from any direction, it can turn to strike faster than a blink of an eye, taking just one-eighth of a second to make its spin.

Researchers from the University of California Merced and the California Academy of Sciences have found that flattie spiders — from the spider family Selenopidae — make the fastest leg-driven turn of any land animal on the planet. Their findings were published this week in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

According to a press release from the California Academy of Sciences on the research, flattie spiders turn to strike their prey at speeds of up to 3,000 degrees per second. Moving at full speed, they can even make three complete rotations in the time it takes to blink your eye. They rank among the fastest-turning animals, along with hummingbirds and fruit flies.

“About half of all spiders species don’t use webs to catch prey,” Sarah Crews, an expert on the Selenopidae family and a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy, says in the press release. “Some stalk and pounce, while others are sit-and-wait ambushers—like flattie spiders.”

Crews, an author of the new study, searched field sites to locate the spiders, which linger on trees and rocky surfaces, to take back to the lab. The spiders are nocturnal, so the entire collection process all had to be done in the dark. They can be found across North and South America as well as Africa, Asia and Australia.

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( 2015 Yu Zeng)

The flattie spider has the fastest-leg driven turn on the planet. Researchers say this finding has practical applications.

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Some say that flying is just falling with style. But for the Selenops "Flattie" spider it's an important defense mechanism. Researchers recently discovered that this arachnid is able to flip itself over and steer quickly back to the safety of its home base when it needs to elude an approaching predator.

 

Dragon wrote:Moving at full speed, they can even make three complete rotations in the time it takes to blink your eye. They rank among the fastest-turning animals, along with hummingbirds and fruit flies.

Impressive :D

Identifying a flattie:

Flat appearance - looks like it has been flattened.

Legs appear increasingly longer from front of body  to back

Six eyes in one row  : 6 of the spiders eight eyes are in one row across it's face.
The other two eyes set back on either side of the face

Flatties tend to hide under under stones or beneath bark on logs and trees

You can also find them between the bases of leaves, on dense plants

Adults measure from 7.5 to 13 millimetres making them medium - sized

There are five  species found north of Mexico, they range from Southern California to eastern Texas and also Florida and the Caribbean Islands.