Spider webs found to attract insects by pulling them in using electric charge created by their own flapping wings
- Breakthrough came as scientist played with his daughter's electrostatically 'magic wand'
Spiders lure insects by using the mutual 'electrical attraction' of their web to their prey, new research has revealed.
Flying insect's wings create an electric charge which in turn acts as a magnet for the spider's web - sucking them to their doom in the sticky silk.
Honeybees can generate up to 200 volts - to detach pollen from flowers - and spider webs may take advantage of that, according to the study at U.C. Berkley by Victor Manuel Ortega-Jimenez and Robert Dudley.
Deadly trap: A spider's web is 'electrically attracted' to a flying insect whose flapping wings generate an electrical charge
Scientists have long marvelled at the genius of the spider's web with its super strong woven silk, the sticky trap to ensnare prey, but their web may be the biggest weapon of all.
The research, published in the journal Scientific Reports tested spider webs' responses to the electrostatic charges of insects and water droplets.
Knowing the webs change shape to catch the insects, the researchers wanted to discover how it was done.
Ortega-Jimenez made the breakthrough when he played with his daughter's electrostatically charged 'magic wand' that helps light objects that it comes into contact with to rise.
They passed the wand in front of a spider web -- and the web deformed in response.
Experiments: The scientists carried out research using water droplets, fruit flies aphids and honeybees
In the lab, the scientists used the webs of the cross spider, or garden spider, from around the Berkeley campus and passed objects like honeybees, green bottle flies, fruit flies, aphids -- and water droplets to see the reaction.
The webs and positively charged objects seemed to be attracted to each other.
The silk threads in the web curved toward each other underneath a charged honeybee that was falling toward it -- which would make it likelier that the bee would become entangled in the web.s.
'Our experiments show clearly that positively charged insect bodies induce rapid attraction of silk threads in the webs of cross-spiders, the authors were quoted in The Atlantic.