Arachnophobes often cite spiders’ unpredictable movement as the basis of their fear, pointing out how each spindly leg seems to lift, flex, and probe with a menacing degree of autonomy. Perhaps ...

When a spider crawled into the corner of a research lab at Rice University in Houston, Texas and curled up to die, it surely never imagined that it would become the inspiration for researchers’ mad ...

Spiders use their eight legs to walk, but daddy longlegs are different in that they use just six legs to walk — which raises the question of what they use those other appendages for. Well, it turns ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. There are over 45,000 species of spiders in existence, but ...

Li Cohen is a senior social media producer at CBS News. She previously wrote for amNewYork and The Seminole Tribune. She mainly covers climate, environmental and weather news. "What sets them apart, ...

Engineers find they can manipulate the legs of dead spiders to serve as grippers. Spiders are amazing. They're useful even when they're dead. Rice University mechanical engineers are showing how to ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Ogre-faced spiders hang from their webs, and like gymnasts, they flip backwards to snatch flying ...

How does a spider stretch its legs? That question is an old zoologist baffler. Spiders have no leg-stretching muscles, yet they have an unquestioned ability to unflex all eight pedal extremities. A ...

Daddy long-legs spiders often appear to walk on six legs, with one pair held aloft. This isn't a defect but a specialized ...