So, this is possibly nothing for arachnophobes, but, to everyone not thus afflicted, I present the rolling spider – after a running start, it does cartwheels through the desert dunes as a means of locomotion. Be sure to check out the video! (Warning, contains spiders, and atrocious German accent.)
Wow, that is pretty cool! Now I am going to be imagining all animals cartwheeling as a form of locomotion. I am tickled at the thought of bears, giraffes, otters, and all other life forms cartwheeling around their habitats.
As am I, now you’ve mentioned it. Oh joyous glee! Stop that locomoting, you crazy hippo’s. 
So few large rocks in the desert…
Is this a new discovery? I thought I’d seen this spider (or something very much like it) on one of Attenborough’s documentaries, quite some years ago - as well as seeing it referenced in threads about why animals don’t have wheels.
That’s how I want to go.
Yeah, I was busy trying to show the spiders in my house how to cartwheel, so I didn’t get around to posting this thread earlier…
I’ve seen (and the article, I think, also mentions it) spiders kind of rolling themselves into a wheel and tumbling down a dune, but never one that actively does cartwheels (or handsprings, as the case may be).
This is what I remember seeing before.
That’s kinda cute!
Aren’t male spiders usually smaller than females?
Very cool cartwheels…nothing like a happy spider to make my day!
Speaking of 8 legged friends:
I teach a speech class and have two quick stories…one student brought in her pet tarantula that she found in the desert near Las Vegas. She actually saw it climb in a hole, reached her hand in and pulled it out and took it home as a pet. Before I could say anything during her speech, she brought it out and set it on her shoulder and walked through the room. About half of my class freaked out and it was a great way to clear a room. (Had I known she was going to do that, I would never have allowed it but it was too late by then.)
Another student told a story about her and her boyfriend buying a new house on the outskirts of Vegas…no homes for about a mile. Home alone, she saw something move quickly on the floor of her kitchen. Then again. She got a good look and freaked out. Calling her boyfriend, he and a friend came home and laughed, claiming she was exaggerating…then they found this wind spider, aptly named as it goes as fast as the wind and has jaws that can chop heads off small critters and do serious damage to a finger. They eventually caught it, but quite a story.
That wind spider is seriously ugly. 
I saw in the linked commentary that the wind spider has “large, oversized jaws.”
Right, as opposed to all those other spiders with tiny oversized jaws.
:smack:
eeeuch. That thing looks like the world’s biggest termite.
The wind spider is not a spider. It’s a solifugid. Nonpoisonous, but highly aggressive. They live in all deserts on earth. The largest ones are the now-infamous “camel spiders” of the Arabian Peninsula.
I’m imagining right now just how horrifying it would be to be bitten by one. :eek:
No kidding. It’s gotta be one of the only lethal nonvenomous arachnids.