You’ve likely heard the term “fight or flight” before, referring to an animal’s choice to fight to defend itself from a predator or run from the source of danger as fast as it can.
However, if fighting is not an option, your legs are not always fast enough to carry you away from peril. Especially when you’re a spider that needs to get all eight legs moving quickly.
Instead of running away, the golden wheel spider (native to the Namib Desert in Southern Africa) has come up with an alternative (and more effective) method to escape the threat of a parasitic wasp that shares its sand dune habitat. It essentially turns itself into a wheel.
Typically, the spider’s main defense is to hide in a deep burrow that it constructs in the sand. But if the spider is caught in the process of constructing its burrow, or is wandering out and about at night in search of a meal, it may find itself exposed and in danger.
The spider is not able to fight off the wasp, and if it happens to be on the slope of a dune, it will turn onto its side and begin cartwheeling down the sand dune. And it cartwheels fast.
Tumbling at about 44 rotations per second, the golden wheel spider is able to make a hasty retreat, hopefully losing the wasp along its dizzying decent.
It turns out that these spiders are not the only arthropods that use this unique mode of escape. The American mantis shrimp, the larvae of the beach tiger beetle, and the caterpillar of a species of moth have perfected similar gymnastic moves.
