While a spider cartwheeling in your direction might elicit a different response in most people, such as running away in fear, Dr. Rechenberg first saw the flic-flac spider and observed is movements, he got so emotional that he cried, according to a report in the New York Times. Rechenberg, the miniature spider robot he’s developed potentially has a variety of uses, possibly “in agriculture, on the ocean floor or even on Mars.” When Dr. Rechenberg has named his spider robot Tabbot, because it’s similar to the word for “spider” in the Berber language, “Tabacha.”Īccording to Dr. Rechenberg designed is ten inches in size, and it performs cartwheels just like the flic-flac spider.Dr. He has based one of his latest robots on the cartwheeling movements of the flic-flac spider, a miniature spider robot that can maneuver over loose sand with ease. Rechenberg has studied the movements of the desert creatures of Morocco every year for more than thirty years, studying “what the animals do to save energy,” and then he builds robots based on their behavior and movements. Rechenberg discovered the gymnastic spider in southeastern Morocco in the sand desert of Erg Chebbi. Then, the flic-flac spiders come out to hunt at night. The Cebrennus rechenbergi spider is nocturnal, living in tubes it creates woven out of silk hidden below the sand in the day. To perform cartwheels, the spider runs as quickly as it can, then uses a throwing sort of motion with its front legs and flips into the air, ending the maneuver by bringing its feet back upon the ground ahead of it, and then it keeps on repeating this series of movements until it’s satisfied it has escaped from whatever is pursuing it. The flic-flac spider can perform cartwheels not only headed downhill, but also on flat ground or headed uphill. Some species of moth caterpillars, the American mantis shrimp, and the larvae of the southeastern beach tiger beetle also do cartwheels. Though the Cebrennus rechenbergi spider is the only known arachnid which can perform cartwheels, it’s not the only animal which can do this acrobatic defensive maneuver. The flic-flac (cartwheeling) spider is described in a study published in the Zootaxa journal, which you can read in its entirety by clicking the last link below. Jager is the person who positively identified the spider as being a new species. Taxonomist Peter Jäger, of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, has been credited with nicknaming the spider the “flic-flac” spider, or cartwheeling spider. Doing cartwheels allows the spider to amp its speed from 3.3 feet per second to 6.6 feet per second. The Moroccan flic-flac spider, which is related to the golden wheel spider, is able to double its speed when it cartwheels away, but the huge expenditure of energy the spider needs comes with a life-threatening risk - if the Cebrennus rechenbergi performs the cartwheels five to 10 times in a day, the spider will often die. The acrobatic arachnid subsequently became named after him. Ingo Rechenberg, of the Technical University of Berlin, discovered the flic-flac, or Cebrennus rechenbergi, spider in 2009. Ingo Rechenberg to create a new energy-saving miniature spider robot which might one day be used on the surface of Mars. In fact, the flic-flac moves propel the spider across the sand at some 6.5 feet per second (2 meters per second), which is twice as fast as its walking speed.The newly discovered Moroccan flic-flac spider, which can cartwheel away from danger like predators, was the inspiration for bionics expert Dr. On the other hand, its Tunisian relative moves only by rolling its body down sand dunes. The spider propels itself off the ground and moves its legs in a flic-flac motion to go uphill, downhill or on level ground. "However, the unique mode of locomotion also serves as a criterion to distinguish the species," Jäger said in a statement. rechenbergi from its Tunisian cousin by looking at minute differences in the sex organs of the spiders. "I caught the spider by hand, and I took it to my car - and in the morning, I tried to take a good photograph of the spider," Rechenberg said, adding that he then took the spider with him to Germany and showed it to arachnologist Peter Jäger, who determined that the animal was a new species.Ĭebrennus rechenbergi looks similar to another spider species, Cebrennus villosus, which lives in Tunisia.
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