Study
Electric fields elicit ballooning in spiders
Morley, Erica L.; Robert, Daniel
Current Biology, 2018
Ballooning had always been attributed to wind, but spiders take off on still days and from surfaces where wind cannot lift them. Money spiders were placed in a sealed chamber with no air movement at all, and vertical electric fields of the magnitude found in the atmosphere were switched on and off. Trichobothria — fine sensory hairs — were filmed for deflection.
- Studied in
- Erigone
- Sample size
- money spiders tested in a chamber with controlled electric fields and no wind
Spiders adopted tiptoe posture and released silk when the field was switched on, and ballooned in completely still air. Their sensory hairs deflected measurably in response to the field, and behaviour tracked the field being switched on and off.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Spiders detect atmospheric electric fields and use them, not only wind, to initiate ballooning.
How NatureHQ reads it
A two-hundred-year-old explanation turns out to be at most half the story. The still-air condition is what makes it decisive — a spider taking off with no wind at all cannot be being lifted by wind. It also resolves a long-standing puzzle about why ballooning happens on calm days and why silk strands splay apart rather than tangling: like charges repel.
- One genus of small spiders in a laboratory chamber.
- Field strengths are realistic but the chamber is not the atmosphere.
- How much of real-world ballooning is electrostatic rather than aerodynamic is unresolved.
Making a spider fly with no wind at all
Spiders balloon on days with no wind, from surfaces wind could not lift them off. If it is not wind, what is it?
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
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Published by: Cell PressPublished in a Cell Press journal.
doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.05.057
This reference was resolved automatically against Crossref on 2026-08-11.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-10.