11/7/2023 0 Comments Moroccan flic flac spiderThe agile spider’s behaviour has inspired a biomimetic. If provoked or threatened, the flic-flac spider can escape by doubling its normal walking speed using forward or backward flips similar to acrobatic flic-flac movements used by gymnasts. The Middle East and the Southwestern United States are two desert regions these arachnids call home. The Moroccan flic-flac spider (Cebrennus rechenbergi) was discovered in the Moroccan desert in 2009. Camel spiders live in deserts around the world. “I picked it up by hand - I wasn’t scared,” Dr Rechenberg said. The typical diet of a camel spider consists of small animals such as insects, reptiles, and birds. If provoked or threatened it can escape by doubling its normal walking speed using forward or backward flips similar to acrobatic flic-flac movements used. But what we do know, thanks to Jäger’s recent observations, is that one of them is an expert ‘flic-flacker’. Cebrennus rechenbergi, also known as the Moroccan flic-flac spider and cartwheeling spider, is a species of huntsman spider indigenous to the sand dunes of the Erg Chebbi desert in Morocco. ![]() It reaches these astonishing speeds (equal to around 100 body-lengths a second) using a unique rolling movement named 'flic-flac' (or 'Rollspinne' in. Dr Rechenberg spotted the spider five years ago while taking an evening stroll (with a bright flashlight) in Erg Chebbi, a sand desert in south-eastern Morocco. These desert spiders are nocturnal and elusive, spending most of their time hidden under rocks or buried in their long, silken burrows, which means there’s very little known about their biology or ecology. The fastest-running spider is the desert-dwelling Moroccan flic-flac spider Cebrennus rechenbergi, which can reach speeds of up to 1.7 m/s (6.12 km/h or 3.8 mph) when trying to escape predators. ![]() Officially, the spider has been named Cebrennus rechenbergi, after Ingo Rechenberg, a bionics expert at the Technical University of Berlin. Although the newly discovered spider usually does its flips forward, it can do a backflip as well, Dr Jäger said, justifying its nickname, a gymnastics term for a back handspring. He describes the new spider in the journal Zootaxa.Īnother arachnid, the golden rolling spider, exhibits a similar flipping behavior, but can only roll rapidly downhill, with the aid of gravity the flic-flac spider can do its tumbling uphill, as well as on level ground and downhill. ![]() The spider lives in a tubelike structure it weaves in the sand, staying hidden under a sandy lid and emerging at night in search of food.Īt first Dr Jäger mistook the spider for a sister species that lives in Tunisia and Algeria, but was able to distinguish the two through a close comparison of their copulatory organs.
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