
How Spiders Fly - f3f3_
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/science/spiders-ballooning-wind.html
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dang
There's a remarkable short film from 1909 about this:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKPbxcK58aI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKPbxcK58aI).

Found via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6427339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6427339).

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grasshopperpurp
That's amazing!

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vertere
> a human hair is just under 100 nanometers in diameter

Does he mean micrometres? From wikipedia[0]:

> The diameter of human hair varies from 0.017 to 0.18 millimeters (0.00067 to
> 0.00709 in).

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair#Description](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair#Description)

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mallomarmeasle
Yes, average human hair is somewhere around 80 microns, based on
ethnicity/nationality. See figure 5 here:
[http://www.jle.com/fr/revues/ejd/e-docs/diversity_in_human_h...](http://www.jle.com/fr/revues/ejd/e-docs/diversity_in_human_hair_growth_diameter_colour_and_shape._an_in_vivo_study_on_young_adults_from_24_different_ethnic_groups_observed_in_the_five_continents_306744/article.phtml)

When I saw this phenomena in person, it was apparent that there was no way
that the diameter of the spider silk is close to the diameter of human hair.

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pmontra
They do fly and anecdotally they prefer doing it by night. I made an all night
bycicle ride days ago and I collected more spider threads than in a whole year
of daily rides. I've been wiping the handlebar for all the night. It stopped
at the first lights of the day.

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f055
So basically, kitesurfing on a thread. Cool. I've seen flying spiders many
times in Poland, and it was fun to watch. Especially because it's not a common
knowledge they could do that.

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ajuc
Pretty much everybody knows that in Poland? The late summer/early autumn is
called "Babie lato" (old women's summer) because of thousands of such threads
flying in the air and catching on trees etc.

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SpaceInvader
"Babie lato" is Ballooning[0] not old women's summer. It has nothing to do
with women, even the old ones ;)

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballooning_(spider)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballooning_\(spider\))

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ansgri
If it is similar to "Бабье лето" [Babyie leto] in Russian, it is quite
literally 'Old Women' Summer'. Didn't know it has anything to do with spiders
though.

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stewbrew
BTW in German, it's called exactly that: Altweibersommer (oldwomensummer).

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seszett
In French it's quite different, the threads are called _threads of the
Virgin_. People would say the Virgin is spinning thread.

I haven't really noticed that phenomenon in years though now that I live in a
city, I wonder if these expressions will just eventually disappear once too
few people live in the countryside.

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freeflight
I tend to "catch" those, by accident, quite regularly during certain seasons
in Germany, and I'm always a bit torn between being annoyed and amazed at it.

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t0mbstone
I learned this fact from the book, "Charlotte's Web", back when I was 5 years
old.

Didn't realize it was such an obscure bit of knowledge...

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andai
_Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can_

[https://xkcd.com/1415/](https://xkcd.com/1415/)

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hellofunk
Upvote! There’s no reason for nice simple humor to be punished here, is there?

Classic HN response, to downvote most attempts at jokes. We’re talking about
flying spiders here after all.

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agumonkey
I'm speechless

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hellofunk
Cool but this should not be surprising to anyone who has seen a SpiderMan
movie. I'm just sayin.

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vanderZwan
Could you explain how watching a Spider-Man movie would teach us that ultra-
thin spider-silk has enough drag to lift a spider up in the air?

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hellofunk
The HN tolerance for humor once again showcased.

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bookofjoe
Or not, considering the source comment has been grayed out.

