Did you know spiders can fly? Well, they can fly. Read on to find out how they fly!

In a mind boggling act, spiders are capable of “ballooning” themselves using silk strands and fly for miles, both in altitude and distance. Small and big spiders alike can do this, although smaller ones are capable of traveling further, and scientists have long theorized the mechanisms of spider ‘flight’. Peter Gorham at the University of Hawaii tested a theory that dates back from the early 1800s, first proposed by Charles Darwin himself, which states that the spiders achieve their amazing lift through electrostatic means. His findings support this theory, explaining the mysterious and peculiar spider flight behavior which has puzzled scientists for so long.

While off the cost of Argentina a few tens of miles away sailing in the infamous HMS Beagle in the 1830s, Darwin perplexedly recalled how the ship was flooded with spiders as if they had dropped from the clouds.

“I repeatedly observed the same kind of small spider, either when placed or having crawled on some little eminence, elevate its abdomen, send forth a thread, and then sail away horizontally, but with a rapidity which was quite unaccountable.”  C. Darwin.

At the time Darwin thought spiders used their silk to catch thermal air currents to carry them to considerable height, and this conventional wisdom was used to explain it for years. Darwin also proposed  “electrostatic repulsion” played a role in the fanning of the threads, but this theory was dismissed by biologists in favor of the thermal air currents theory.