How Spiders Fly | Hacker News Reader

How Spiders Fly

nytimes.com

88 pointsf3f3_28 comments

Open articleView on HN

There's a remarkable short film from 1909 about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKPbxcK58aI.

Found via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6427339.

That's amazing!

> 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

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...

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.

It looks like the article has been fixed; it now reads:

> a human hair is 80,000 to 100,000 nanometers in diameter

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.

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.

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.

"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)

Yeah obviosuly, that's why I mentioned it here. I just provided literal translation.

It's both a name of the behavior and of that time of year.

Looks like "babie lato" has two translations: https://en.pons.com/translate/polish-english/babie+lato

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.

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

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.

I'm Polish and even though I have heard the term Babie Lato I have never ever associated it with spiders.

I thought everybody knew that, we had it explained in primary school, and it's so cool it's hard to forget :)

In the USA it seems to be relatively common knowledge -- probably because Charlotte, the spider from Charlotte's Web, is one of a species that balloons. It's even a plot point: in the story, much to Wilbur's (the main character, a pig) disappointment after he went to some length to save Charlotte's egg sac, most of her spiderlings ballooned away soon after hatching (but three chose to stay behind).

> kitesurfing on a thread

Kites are lifting bodies. This is different physics.

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.

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...

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can

https://xkcd.com/1415/

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.

I'm speechless

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

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?

The HN tolerance for humor once again showcased.

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

Or read Charlotte's Web.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com