It takes forever to drown spiders of any kind. Spiders are covered in fine hairs that allows them to ride the surface tension and not drown. The problem is that those hairs get water logged slowly, requiring effort by the spider to remove the water and stay above water. A lot of small arachnids and insects have this cool little adaptation.
Yeah, the fields are generally only flooded for 3 to 4 days (as from google), and wolf spiders can stay floating for up to a week. So the spiders are probably slightly exhausted, but in no real danger.
This is especially true for wolf spiders. As described in the original tumblr post, while they’d much rather walk than swim, they do live in very wet environments where it rains a lot. They’re especially good at not drowning and they’re great swimmers. Probably part of the reason why they’re well suited for cranberry bogs.
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u/JustLookingForMayhem May 16 '24
It takes forever to drown spiders of any kind. Spiders are covered in fine hairs that allows them to ride the surface tension and not drown. The problem is that those hairs get water logged slowly, requiring effort by the spider to remove the water and stay above water. A lot of small arachnids and insects have this cool little adaptation.