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. The robot - named Tabbot after "Tabacha," which means spider in the Berber language - can move by both walking and turning somersaults, just like the creature it's modeled after.The newly discovered Moroccan flic-flac spider, which can cartwheel away from danger like predators, was the inspiration for bionics expert Dr. Inspired by the spider's unusual movement mechanism, Rechenberg, a bionics expert, developed a 10-inch-long (25 centimeters) model of a spider robot. To protect itself from the sun and predators, the animal weaves tubelike "towers" in the sand that are held together by silk threads. rechenbergi is nocturnal and lives in the Erg Chebbi desert in southeastern Morocco, close to the Algerian border. 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. 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. Researchers officially named the spider gymnast Cebrennus rechenbergi after Ingo Rechenberg, a scientist from Berlin who discovered the animal on a trip to Morocco five years ago. The dancing arachnid has even been nicknamed the "flic-flac spider" for its gymnastic dexterity and has served as inspiration for a creepy-crawly robot. An agile spider that somersaults down sand dunes has been discovered in the deserts of Morocco.
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