News Animals

Here’s how spiders that go overboard use light to find land

Spiders flung off a kayak head to areas that don’t reflect polarized light, experiments suggest

A dark-colored, very long-legged spider sits on a green leaf.

The elongate stilt spider, like the one spotted here on a leaf in Niagara Falls State Park, finds land by detecting watery reflections, new experiments suggest.

Cody Hough (CC BY-SA 3.0)

By Madeline Reinsel

Biologist Brian Gall was flinging stowaway spiders out of his kayak when he noticed an interesting pattern: After landing on the water’s surface, the arachnids quickly darted to the nearest shoreline, no matter how far he paddled from dry land.