Spiders have no ears. But you feel you arrive

If you already have the hairy legs of spiders there were impressive, let alone in a few lines. Just the hair, the spiders jumpers - a family that includes 13% of all known species of spiders - is so sensitive that it can capture voices and sounds from several meters away.

The discovery described in Current Biology refutes the widespread theory that these animals, having no ears, can not hear, and are based only on touch and sight.

APPRECIATE SURPRISE. Scientists at Cornell University (USA) have come to this conclusion unexpectedly, during a study to measure the visual ability of the jumping spiders Phidippus audax species, by monitoring the electrical activity of their brains.

WHO IS THERE? The Panel noted an abnormal activation in the neural response of these animals when someone moved noisily a lab chair, or clapping. The capacity was immediately brought back to the hair of the legs. When this has been wet with water and rendered incapable of vibrating, in fact, the auditory neurons of spiders have ceased to be activated in response to sounds.

PREFERENCES. Further studies have established that the arachnids of this species are able to hear a clap to more than 5 meters away, and are more sensitive to the dark sounds (between 80 and 130 Hz) as the male voices and the hum of parasitoid wasps, their predators.

I HEAR YOU (WHAT DID YOU SAY?). This is not however a hearing superfine: what spiders feel looks a bit '' to a bad phone communications, "say the researchers. Perhaps they sense the noise and the direction it comes from, but there seems to be no interpretation or interaction.