Some important context to kick things off: spiders do not have noses, nor do they have ears.
Try as we might, humanity has never fully understood how spiders are able to sniff things out without nostrils. But—you’ll be happy to hear—thanks to some research published in the journal ‘Proceedings of the National Academy Of Sciences’, we’ve recently learned a little bit more about how spiders are able to detect scents, especially sex pheromones.
Examining wasp spiders (Argiope bruennichi), a team of researchers from Lund University in Sweden and the University of Greifswald in northern Germany found that males used specialized olfactory hairs on their legs to detect airborne pheromones released by female wasp spiders.
The little hairs, called wall pore sensilla, are strategically placed along the spiders’ legs. This allows them to sense odors in the air while walking around, without getting in the way of whatever they’re doing, like catching prey or weaving a web. Only the males have them, suggesting that they are primarily used for mating.
The researchers found that even a tiny bit of female wasp spider pheromones could elicit a strong response from males, suggesting that their olfactory systems are about as advanced as those of other insects known to be highly sensitive to sex pheromones.
Working on the assumption that, if the wasp spider has these sensilla, other types of spider must also have them, the team examined 19 additional species to find that—yeah, most of them do, actually, and they’re almost always exclusive to males.
Now, the researchers are left with some nagging questions: can female spiders detect odors? And—if so—how, if they don’t have the same sensilla?
Stay tuned for more important spider sense news.
The post Turns Out Spiders Use Their Legs to Sniff Out Sex appeared first on VICE.
