Australia's huntsman spiders are fast, but a new study says they might be one of the swiftest in the world. The study, a preprint published on bioRxiv, analyzed the speeds of 258 species of spiders from new experiments and past research. Australia's brown huntsman, with its medium size and relatively long legs, was found to have an edge in running past its competition. The huntsman is a common sight across eastern Australia and is regularly found in homes, but it is harmless to humans. According to the study, huntsman spiders can move at 3.59 meters per second. Biomechanics researcher Christofer Clemente from the University of the Sunshine Coast said the new study, which used his huntsman data from 2021, "answers a really interesting question" about how animals like spiders move. He noted that while 3.59 meters per second was the absolute top speed, about as fast as a human jogging, it was only for "a fraction of a second". What makes huntsman spiders fast? Dr. Clemente's earlier study, published in the Journal of Comparative Physiology A, also looked at the speed of spiders and how they moved. Spiders use a hydraulic pressure system in their legs to push their legs out, while muscles pull them back in again. The question that both Dr. Clemente's research and the new study were trying to answer was if, just like in other animals, medium-sized spiders were the fastest. Despite the incredible speed of huntsman spiders, Dr. Clemente suggested other spider species that had not been investigated yet might be even faster. There is also the question of exactly what species the speedy huntsman was. Two species of brown huntsman spider are found in south-east Queensland: Heteropoda jugulans and Heteropoda cervina, which Dr. Clemente noted were extremely hard to tell apart. He said more research could be done to analyze exactly what species was the speediest using DNA testing or other methods, but he was more interested in using models and robotics to understand how spiders moved. [Both research groups] are really interested in just trying to understand locomotion and the evolution of locomotion. So, trying to understand basically why animals move the way they do and what limits them from moving faster?
