Categories: OMG

Terrifying Kung-Fu Flipping Spider, One of Most Fascinating Species Recently Discovered

Spiders can be scary, here's one that will send you running.

Spiders can be scary, here’s one that will send you running. If you are a person with arachnophobia, the mere sight of a spider will send you fleeing for your sanity. But what if you came face to face with this terrifyingly fast flipping spider speeding towards you with half its legs in the air?

Meet the Cebrennus rechenbergi, a newly-discovered arachnid that’s been dubbed the Moroccan flic-flac spider, so-called because of its front flipping motion that sets its apart from its crawling cousins.

Shudder

Photo credit: ESF

A species of huntsman spider that lives in the sand dunes of Morocco’s Erg Chebbi desert, the flic-flac spider uses an acrobatic type of flipping movement to double its walking speed.

Now, while it only starts moving this way when attacked or provoked by enemies, can you imagine it Kung-Fu flipping towards you at inordinate amounts of speed?

And by speed, we mean as fast as two miles per second. And in both directions! Can you run that fast when this spider is after you?

Giving Usain Bolt a run for his money…

Photo credit: NY Times

It is so strong, it can propel itself clear off the ground, and move either uphill or downhill, in inclines of up to 40 percent.

It may not be an overly large type of arachnid, and is in fact described as medium-sized and appears to be desert-sand brown in color (probably for use as camouflage), the Cebrennus rechenbergi is a nocturnal animal that feeds on moths (and thank heavens for that!), and tunnels below the ground to cool itself when the sun comes up.

But think! Here’s a spider that has no use for crawling, and won’t creep you out very slowly, but scare the bejeesus out of you at the rate of two miles per second. That’s equivalent to 7,200 miles an hour!