These Amazing Spiders Don’t Have to Worry About Jet Lag

These Amazing Spiders Don’t Have to Worry About Jet Lag

Humans as a whole generally run on a daily clock of around 24 hours a day/night. The internal clocks, also known as circadian rhythms, dictate when we do our most important functions throughout that time period such as sleeping, eating, and just about anything else you can think of. This is why we experience jet lag when we go somewhere with a time zone that is hours ahead or behind ours. We lose or gain those ours, which means our bodies have to adapt to that new 24 our cycle. Scientists have thought that pretty much every organism on this planet lives based on this general 24 hour circadian rhythm. However, one spider was recently discovered to run on a completely different circadian clock, which makes them almost akin to super mutants.

Darrell Moore decided to study the circadian rhythm of the trashline orb weaver spiders after a friend, Thomas Jones, asked him to look into some strange behavior he noticed in them. What he discovered was incredible! These spiders actually run on a mere 18.5 hours a day, which is the shortest natural circadian cycle ever seen in this world. According the scientific community, these spiders shouldn’t even exist.

In order to come to this conclusion, the scientists first decided to observe the spiders’ natural daily cycle by leaving them in a completely dark room where they wouldn’t be affected by sunlight. Using beams infrared beams set to mark ever time the spiders made a move, they were able to reveal that without any external interference these spiders functioned in 18.5 hour cycles. What is even more amazing, however, is that when the spiders were exposed to light such as sunlight, they would then reset their clocks by 6 hours the next day.

Think of experiencing a six hour jetlag every day. That’s impossible for the human body to even do. The most any creature has ever been able to shift their internal clock is by an hour or two. This extra 6 hours basically gives these spiders an incredible advantage. While most spiders have to rebuild their webs for the day every morning, these trashline orb weavers are able to get an early start due to their shorter circadian rhythm. They start rebuilding their webs while it is still dark and basically get a 6 hour head start for the day…everyday. Can you imagine living with 6 extra hours every day?!

What would you do with those extra 6 hours if our circadian rhythms were that short?