Did you know when spiders drift through the air (called ballooning) they don’t primarily rely on wind, instead they detect and utilize electricity in the air! This helps explain how spiders have been found 2.5 miles up in the air and up to 1,000 miles out to sea.
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Our atmosphere is like a giant electrical circuit. Everyday there are about 40,000 thunderstorms around the world, charging the air. The upper atmosphere has a positive charge. The Earth’s surface has a negative charge.

When ballooning spiders raise their torso to the air and release a strand of silk. The silk picks up a negative charge, repelling them from the positively charged surface, resulting in lift off! This is known as flight by electrostatic repulsion.

To learn more read the article “Spiders Can Fly Hundreds of Miles Using Electricity”