{"id":774358,"date":"2026-07-02T13:33:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/774358\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T13:33:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:33:13","slug":"australian-spider-declared-worlds-fastest-after-record-breaking-sprint-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/774358\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian spider declared world\u2019s fastest after record-breaking sprint"},"content":{"rendered":"

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An Australian jungle huntsman spider<\/a> is the world\u2019s fastest arachnid, reaching a top speed<\/a> of almost 3.6 metres per second, according to a new lab study.<\/p>\n

For a long time, the Moroccan flic-flac spider<\/a> was considered to be the world\u2019s fastest, <\/a>with a speed of nearly 1.7m\/s, but some experts didn\u2019t agree that this is a type of sprinting locomotion.<\/p>\n

To settle this debate, researchers from Germany\u2019s University of Greifswald and Imperial College London<\/a> conducted a lab test with more than 160 live spider species<\/a> from across the UK, Australia, North America, and southern Europe as well as dozens sourced from pet shops.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe measured maximum sustained running speed for 236 specimens representing 162 species,\u201d researchers wrote in a yet-to-be peer-reviewed study posted in bioaRxiv. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo maximise coverage, we supplemented these measurements with published data for a further 96 species.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spiders were individually weighed and tested for top speeds on A4 and A3 grid papers, with cameras monitoring the tests to study the biomechanics<\/a> of their movements.<\/p>\n

The papers were mounted on a rigid plastic tray or metal sheet, with liquid para\ufb03n applied to the walls to prevent escape by climbing species<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"HeteropodaHeteropoda cervina on a barbeque in NSW (Tim Ansley via Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n

A huntsman spider<\/a> sourced from Queensland was the fastest of them all, reaching a top speed of 3.59m\/s, researchers concluded.<\/p>\n

The study found that a spider\u2019s running speed roughly correlated to its body weight.<\/p>\n

\u201cRunning speed increased substantially with body mass, from a minimum of 0.018m\/s measured for the money spider Maso sundevalli (body mass 1mg), to a maximum of 3.59 metres per second recorded for the huntsman spider<\/a> Heteropoda cervina,\u201d they noted.<\/p>\n

However, there was substantial speed variation among spiders of very similar body mass.<\/p>\n

Citing an example of this discrepancy, they said the orange purse-web spider, Calommata signata, and the tube-web spider, Segestria florentina, both weighed 200mg, yet their top speeds differed 28-fold.<\/p>\n

\"MaleMale goblin spider Niarchos normani (Dup\u00e9rr\u00e9 N, Tapia E, Evolutionary Systematics via Wikimedia Commons CC)<\/p>\n

Large spiders seem to run faster as long as they are not so large that a heavy abdomen burdens them, the scientists say.<\/p>\n

There are notable outliers to this, like the tiny orange goblin spider, Oonops pulcher, that weighs only 0.1mg but moves at over 0.2m\/s. <\/p>\n

It was so fast for its size that researcher Shreyas Kuchibhotla from ICL told New Scientist the spider \u201cpractically teleported\u201d.<\/p>\n

Fast running is also linked to having longer legs, scientists say.<\/p>\n

\u201cStrong running performance, after accounting for both body size and shared ancestry, was associated with relatively longer legs… but not with leg slenderness,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

Whether a spider species hunts on the ground or in foliage and whether it predominantly moves upright or upside down also relates to its running speed, scientists say.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese differences may well alter both the selective value of running speed, and the way in which it is realised,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":772890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":["post-774358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/772890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}