Whip Spiders Use Their Feet to Smell Their Way Home

After a late dinner, a jungle-dwelling whip spider can't rely on an Uber driver to get her home. She has to find the way herself, in the pitch-black, picking her way over thick undergrowth to reach the tree she lives on. It's a trick she can even manage when plucked from her home tree and tossed into the forest at random, up to 10 meters away. Now scientists think whip spiders don't use her eyes for this homing feat—they use their feet. Whip spiders hunt by night and hunker down at dawn under logs or in tree crevices. Their homing ability is especially impressive given the dense rainforests where they live. They can't navigate by the sun, like a honeybee, or by the stars, like a dung beetle. So how do they find their way? Verner Bingman, who researches animal migration and navigation at Bowling Green State University, and his ...