<\/p>
As the old joke goes, you can prove that a spider\u2019s ears are on its legs, because if you pull all its limbs off, it doesn\u2019t come when you call its name.<\/p>\n
Actually, spiders don\u2019t have ears as such, but they do indeed hear with their legs, by means of a smattering of specialised fine hairs that are stimulated by airborne vibrations and connected to nerve cells at their base.<\/p>\n
However, at least one species augments these capabilities by constructing an enormous \u2018eardrum\u2019 10,000 times bigger than itself, sitting right in the middle of it and picking up the vibrations through its feet.<\/p>\n
In fact, the orb webs spun by the bridge spider (Larinioides sclopetarius<\/em>) \u2013 a UK species so-called because it is most commonly encountered on human-made structures near water \u2013 are more sensitive to acoustic vibrations than any known conventional eardrum.<\/p>\n And because the web is made by the spider and is external to its body, the spider is able to adjust and regenerate its external \u201ceardrum\u201d as it needs to.<\/p>\n A study published in The\u00a0Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em><\/a> on the bridge spider (also known as the grey cross spider) in March 2022 describes how \u201chearing in the orb-weaving spider is functionally outsourced to its extended phenotype<\/a>\u201d, i.e. to its constructed web. The authors of the paper say the sensory ecology of spiders \u2013 \u201cone of the oldest land animals\u201d \u2013 should be re-examined.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Main image: <\/em>Larinioides sclopetarius. \u00a9\u00a0schizoform via Flickr<\/a> (shared under CC BY 2.0<\/a>)<\/em><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n By Stuart Blackman Published: Wednesday, 18 January 2023 at 12:00 am As the old joke goes, you can prove that a spider\u2019s ears are on its legs, because if you pull all its limbs off, it doesn\u2019t come when you call its name. Actually, spiders don\u2019t have ears as such, but they do indeed hear […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":24184,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"2"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/01\/can-spiders-hear.jpg",2048,2048,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/01\/can-spiders-hear-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/01\/can-spiders-hear-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/01\/can-spiders-hear-768x768.jpg",768,768,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/01\/can-spiders-hear-1024x1024.jpg",800,800,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/01\/can-spiders-hear-1536x1536.jpg",1536,1536,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/01\/can-spiders-hear-2048x2048.jpg",2048,2048,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Stuart Blackman Published: Wednesday, 18 January 2023 at 12:00 am As the old joke goes, you can prove that a spider\u2019s ears are on its legs, because if you pull all its limbs off, it doesn\u2019t come when you call its name. Actually, spiders don\u2019t have ears as such, but they do indeed hear…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/24183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More on spiders:\u00a0<\/h4>\n
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