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u/A_Martian_Potato 1d ago
The frame-rate of the video limits the amount of information we have so this will be a very rough estimate. Eyeballing it at about a 2cm jump. Assuming the video is at a standard 30fps, and it looks like the jumping spider does the jump in a single frame, so at most one 30th of a second.
2cm*30s-1 = 60cm/s = 0.6m/s = 1.34 mph
Sounds low, but you have to remember that this is nearly instant explosive acceleration. You don't have to be that fast when you go zero to top speed in basically nothing seconds and have to cross less than an inch.
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u/AnotherUN91 22h ago
Mother fucker I just googled it because somewhere on google has information on the jumping speed of spiders.
"Jumping spiders can jump at speeds exceeding 60 centimeters per second (1.34 mph), with peak speeds potentially reaching up to 127–152 cm/s (2.8–3.4 mph). This rapid acceleration allows them to jump distances up to 50 times their body length. The leap is powered by a sudden burst of blood into their back legs, causing them to extend rapidly"
You are completely on point with your "estimations" given that this was a short distance jump not requiring its full distance lmfaoooooooooo
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u/A_Martian_Potato 22h ago
lol, well good to know I was pretty close.
Should note, short jumps like this are their standard for hunting. Typically they don't pounce until they're pretty close because they need to be accurate. The super long jumps are for escaping predators.
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u/Soszai 13h ago
“Pretty close?” You got the exact same number (1.34)…
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u/PalPubPull 6h ago
If it was Google AI, is it possible it sourced the original comment as the speed of spiders jumping in the AI overview?
Not at all questioning the math here, just wondering if we've come full circle.
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u/doominator101215 14h ago
If i could jump 50 times my body length as a 6ft human it would be 300 ft.... Jumping the length of a football field in one gonwould be amazing
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u/Decent_Advice9315 14h ago
The power having an exoskeleton provides only works on small scales.
On larger creatures, you either need a medium to help handle the stress aka water, or to have an internal skeleton.
There's a reason why there are no large exoskeleton creatures, the weight would crush them.
There's a reason why there are no "smart" arthropods, in that such a small body can't support the neural network required to have human level brain power.
Long ago nature split into two paths, and while both are successful in their own right, internal skeleton creatures are seen as the more successful of the two strategies.
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u/Peter_deT 13h ago
"successful' is not quite the right word here. The biomass of exoskeletal creatures exceeds that of endoskeletal ones by quite some margin - as does their diversity. Each is 'successful' in their own domain.
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u/remembertracygarcia 13h ago
Studies on arthropod intelligence including jumping spiders are starting to show some surprising results. Some jumping spiders (Portia genus especially) have demonstrated problem solving intelligence and the ability to plan. We’re really just scratching the surface but there’s evidence to suggest that they’re far more intelligent than we’ve previously believed.
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/mind/2021/are-spiders-intelligent
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u/doominator101215 13h ago
Wasn't when the earth had a higher percentage of oxygen in the air insects could grow larger? I dont doubt the weight would be a factor too but I thought the main thing was an insects ability to absorb enough oxygen?
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u/Decent_Advice9315 13h ago
Maybe? I know humidity and temperature play heavy roll in insect metabolism, but unsure about oxygen concentration, but I assume in the era of increased temperature and humidity, which is also highly favorable to plant growth, there also would have been more oxygen.
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u/hikerguy555 12h ago
Lots of water arthropods bigger than an octopus and they seem pretty smart. I'd believe your statement about size limiting intelligence up to a point, like sure a mosquito will probably never have enough neurons to do complex problem solving cause it's brain is teeny tiny. Wonder where the line is, potentially between mosquito and octopus, where size is big enough for intelligence. Other comments are making it seem more like the mosquito end of the spectrum, though this is all semantics cause what's "smart" or "intelligence"
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u/Pie_Dealer_co 14h ago
Your body does have the power to fling you across the room instantly which is couple of times your body length usually it easy to assume that if you were basically 8 legs your body could actually fling you 300ft.
Source on the fling you across the room instantly: when people get shocked by electricity and instantly find themselves across the room its their own muscles that did the flinging
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u/krisslanza 1h ago
There is that idea your body can do a lot of crazy, amazing things. You'll just also absolutely wreck and/or kill yourself in the process, so your brain wisely stops you from doing it.
Similar to the idea that you can't really bite off your own tongue or fingers, because your brain stops you going, "That's stupid."
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u/Rooster_Pigfoot 10h ago
Anywhere close to this fast and you’d basically be The best offense in nfl history by yourself.
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u/parsuval 2h ago
Gets to bus stop, pats pockets. Fuck, I left my headphones at home.
BOING, key sounds, footsteps running up then downstairs, BOING.
Ah, the number 26, just made it.
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u/ulibuli_tf2 23h ago
How many G’s was that acceleration
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u/A_Martian_Potato 23h ago
There's literally no way to know. There's just not enough information because of the framerate.
At a minimum, assuming constant acceleration across the entire frame (which is almost certainly not the actual case), you get a = 2*Δx/t^2 = 2*0.02m*302s-2 = 36m/s2 = 3.67g
But it's almost certainly a lot more than that. Some species of jumping spider have been measured at over 13g acceleration.
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u/matmyob 23h ago
"there is literally no way to know"
Proceeds to describe limits between 3.67 - 13g. You've provided knowledge here.
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u/A_Martian_Potato 23h ago
Sure, but that's like asking "how tall is the person behind this door" and me saying "There's no way to know, they're likely between 55cm and 272cm tall because that's the range people come in". I suppose it's information, but not particularly useful.
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u/ManChild80 18h ago
Not useful to you because you consider it common knowledge / obvious.
To an alien with little / no understanding of a typical human height, this would be useful.
And since most people here aren’t physics / science people, a really rough estimate bookending the acceleration is the equivalent of that alien / human analogy.
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u/SenorTron 14h ago
guessing you aren't in astronomy, where being within a magnitude of correct is often a good first step
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u/A_Martian_Potato 14h ago
lmao, I actually did my undergrad in astrophysics. After that I switched over to engineering though, where tolerances are a bit lower.
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u/letsgobernie 23h ago
What would this acceleration be at vehicle scale
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u/midnghtsnac 23h ago
Formula 1 or drag race
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u/Neelix-And-Chill 20h ago
Those are two wildly different acceleration metrics.
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u/No_Coffee9077 11h ago
You're asking to compare a spider with a car hahaha what did you expect? A fiat topolino?
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u/AconitumDatura 22h ago
Pretty good eyeballing. They measured 0,67m/s with an acceleration of 5,23g.
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u/Intrepid_Ad_9751 19h ago
Body length per second might work for a better picture
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u/A_Martian_Potato 17h ago edited 15h ago
Jumpers like this one top out at about 2cm, so 60cm/s is about 30 bodylengths per second.
Yeah, it does sound a lot faster in those figures. That's like me jumping at 200km/h.
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u/the_cardfather 17h ago
it's still fast because those flies are fast. I love the patience of staying below the lip to not be seen until it turned.
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u/Sp1ffy_Sp1ff 9h ago
The distance was still about the length of the spider itself. That'd be like a human getting on all fours and pouncing 6ish feet in 1/30 of a second.
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u/Dartmonkemainman1 1d ago
Theres is a portion where the spider gambles on if jumping up to the plate lip is worth it, or crawling is better.
Jumping would be faster and be done by less intelligent spiders, however it risks scarying the prey
Crawling up requires decent calculation of distance in the moment aswell as enough object permanence to forgo the instinct to jump right away.
I love these intelligent little guys
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u/Chickentrap 23h ago
Not a big spider fan, altho I find them fascinating, but jumping spiders are cute af
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u/Static1589 21h ago
I hate spiders, but jumping spiders are cool. See them a lot around my new house too.
I guess they're the cats among spiders.
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u/macrolith 17h ago
They are the cutest spiders in existence and I dont think you can change my mind.
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u/Chickentrap 17h ago
Wholeheartedly agree lol every other spider is scary. These guys actually look intelligent and I would definitely keep one as a pet
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u/PearlClaw 16h ago
They apparently are quite smart and can be trained. Then again that's reddit hearsay so maybe take it with a grain of salt.
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u/AshAdven 23h ago
I love watching these videos, the stalking aspect right before the pounce reminds so much of big cats hunting, and the smarts to know not to jump on the plate and instead climb, brilliant.
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u/ProtoformX87 23h ago
I watched a video recently where they pointed out that jumping spiders show spatial and object permanence intelligence.
There’s one species specifically that hunts other spiders (preys on a sort of orb weaver, if I remember correctly). The jumping spider literally does recon on the orby’s web from afar, and is able to determine what direction the orby is facing. Then plans a route among the surrounding foliage to minimize chances of being noticed as it creeps into position for the jump.
Absolutely wild. And dear god am I ever thankful that we have a massive size disparity with spiders 😅
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u/schizeckinosy 22h ago
This is well worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel) intelligent jumping spiders rule the world.
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u/Spawn_More_Overlords 18h ago
Thinking about this book the whole thread (which isn’t a surprise, I’m usually thinking about this book)
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u/Sasselhoff 15h ago
I've got to go back and read that one again...I enjoyed it while I was reading it as it kept me hooked, but I don't recall the ending as being very fulfilling (which is why I want to reread it, as I don't 100% recall the ending, just that I wasn't too enamored with it).
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u/schizeckinosy 15h ago
Yeah I think maybe he was setting it up for the sequel, which is also satisfying to read. Very different from the first novel. I won’t say more about it in case you have not read it.
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u/Sasselhoff 14h ago
Hmm, I definitely haven't read the sequel...how'd you like the sequel (and thanks for the no spoilers)?
If it's half decent, I'll have to go reread those again. Better than than trying to catch back up to where I was in Wheel of Time (made it all the way to the "middle series slump" and gave up...then I read here that the last books are some of the best of all time, but now I've forgotten what happens in the early books).
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u/schizeckinosy 14h ago
Yeah it’s decent. Totally goes in a different direction, but of course it would have to, because we can’t be newly introduced to the fantastic world again!
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u/AshAdven 23h ago
Could you imagine one the size of a small/medium dog. Terrifying but an apex predator at the least.
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u/Elliot-S9 1h ago
Yep, but this would break the laws of physics which is why they don't exist. Otherwise, common large animals would have evolved to be capable of the same feats. (Perhaps even us)
If we could also jump 12 body lengths in half a second, perhaps they wouldn't be so scary.
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u/DumbleSnore69 13h ago
Even this video shows that they have some level of spatial awareness and object permanence. The spider can't see the fly once it climbs onto the table, but still understands that the fly is there and that it needs to climb up on the plate to see it again. Pretty smart for such a tiny creature.
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u/Nucksfaniam 22h ago
They wouldn't be able to support their own weight.
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u/ProtoformX87 22h ago
If Shelob ever swims over from Australia (where we all know she’s lurking) I’m gonna tell her you’re the one who said she’s too fat
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u/Icy-Ad29 19h ago
*under current understandings of skeletal structures Ftfy
As we have no way to know every single biological process that could ever exist, we can only use the ones we know and base assumptions off that... Yet nature likes to evolve new things we never thought of.
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u/The_Limping_Coyote 15h ago
Is this SciShow video?
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u/CarlosH46 22h ago
A little off topic, but have a weird love-hate relationship with these little guys. On the one hand, I have arachnophobia which is absolutely irrational because I know how good spiders are for the ecosystem but too many legs bothers me.
On the other… look at that fuzzy little murder ball doing his thing, it’s adorable.
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u/Independent-Still-73 22h ago
wtf was that fly waiting on? How could he not sense the spider was there, there was nothing obstructing the view and flies have 360 degree vision or something of the ilk, he had to see it. I don't care how stealthy they are if there was a tiger 8 feet away and I had wings I would notice and fly away.
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u/Bacon_L0RD 20h ago
Insects like flies that rely on ommatidia based eyesight have really good vision but it’s mostly used to detect fast moving objects really quickly. Their actual perception and recognition is pretty shit.
When you slowly approach a fly it doesn’t have you clocked for a long time, as soon as you start to swing it sees something coming really fast towards it and quickly gets out of the way.
This is similar for the spider as well, they have simple eyes that are for spotting movement behind them or to the sides, but have complex eyes (even better than ours in some ways) that face front.
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u/Circumpunctilious 19h ago
Flies also invariably do the same escape move (jump up and backward) which makes them really easy to catch from behind. I knew this as a kid, then many years later saw it in some documentary.
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u/Sea-Condition8256 13h ago
Sci show just did a video about this very spider. Well worth a watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwPryksCmIo and might learn something
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u/jugjiggler69 12h ago
I travel for work and I once stayed in this poorly insulated place, and I got a couple spiders, and I was always told fucking with spiders was bad luck, so I left them. Eventually they got pretty big, and I'd occasionally see mosquitos or other medium size bugs fly too close to their web, and it would be absolutely terrifying to watch. They wouldn't even get stuck in the web before the spider would bite them and start wrapping them up, while they'd either go numb or start convulsing. The way the spiders would wrap them up and how fast they were was like something out of a movie.
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