While there has been some evidence that spiders have poor vision, many people are curious – can spiders hear?

I myself got super curious after seeing a really interesting post about this in the Facebook group Tarantula Owners Worldwide. Someone had asked a question about whether or not tarantulas could hear music (and what genre they might like if they could). The main point of the post had been to ask if loud music was TOO loud for the spiders, but let’s just say there were a LOT of interesting responses lol.

Tarantula owners in the group were saying all this hilarious stuff about their tarantulas enjoying everything from metal to country to Disney soundtracks! Some even said that their tarantulas would ONLY come out of their hides during certain music. I myself would love to see Spidey, my G. rosea, dancing to some Beyonce, but I don’t think that’s happening anytime soon!

But anyway, back to the point. Can loud music harm tarantulas? Can spiders hear it?

One person stated it was more about the vibrations than the music, which could be more irritating or rousing for tarantulas when played loudly. They wrote:

Answer is basic, loud vibrations cause Tarantulas to react differently in their habitats. If you play music loudly around them all the time then more than likely you are playing a factor into their erratic behavior or symptoms. People who say, “I do it all the time and it doesn’t ever bother them” probably never took the time to understand if it would in the first place and are only justifying their means. Number one reason why I won’t have a TV or speakers in the same room as my collection.

I personally think that is sound advice, because tarantulas really need a calm environment to be comfortable. Many tarantula owners have noted that the darker and more quiet you keep a room that your tarantulas are in, the more you will see him. They will likely hide from strong vibrations and light.

Now, spider do NOT have eardrums, but they CAN hear! It seems that spiders rely on the hairs on their bodies for their sense of hearing. Here’s a really interesting video on this:

From the video:

To find this out, researchers implanted tiny electrodes in a region of spiders’ brains that would show whether sound was being processed. Then they placed the spiders on a specially designed box to eliminate any vibrations from below—most spiders sense their surroundings through vibrations—and scared the heck out of them with a speaker-produced buzz of one of their predators, the mud dauber wasp. An out-of-earshot, high-frequency buzz and a silent control elicited no response from the spiders. But the 80-hertz wasp buzz made them freeze and look around, startled, just as they would do in the wild. What’s more, data from the electrodes showed a spike in brain activity with each buzz, revealing that spiders actually hear sounds, from a swooping mud dauber wasp to you crunching potato chips on your couch. The researchers, who publish their work today in Current Biology, say further study is needed to see exactly how spiders receive sounds without eardrums, but they believe sensitive hairs on their legs play a part.

In fact, research has shown that the hairs on spiders are so sensitive they can detect human speech from several meters away. And since tarantulas are the hairiest spiders around, this must mean they have superior hearing, right?! Paul Shamble, an arachnologist who led the research at Cornell University, said:

“All spiders have these hairs, so it seems likely this is something that lots of spiders can do, as opposed to something exclusive to jumping spiders. This result really offers a new perspective on the auditory world of spiders, since we now know they can hear at much greater distances.”

Surprisingly, we found that they also possess an acute sense of hearing. They can hear sounds at distances much farther away than previously thought, even though they lack ears with the eardrums typical of most animals with long-distance hearing. I’m not sure that everyone’s going to be thrilled that spiders can hear them as well see them.”

The spiders’ hearing seems to be connected to the tiny hairs on their forelegs, which was proven by scientists putting water droplets on the spiders’ legs to dull the vibrations of the hairs. When this happened, the auditory neurons in the spiders’ brain stopped firing in response to sounds. While this study involved jumping spiders, scientists believe that this applies to other arachnids as well. Also from the report:

Further investigation showed the spiders could hear claps from more than five metres away and that they were most sensitive to low frequencies (about 80-130Hz), which would match the wingbeats of parasitoid wasps, a predator of jumping spiders, or the pitch of a very deep male voice.

Shamble said,  “It probably sounds like a really bad phone connection. They probably can tell that you’re talking from across the room, but they’re certainly not listening to you.”

Gil Menda at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said of the jumping spider Phidippus audax: 

We were very surprised. Our studies extended the range of auditory sensitivity to more than 3 metres – over 350 body lengths – for our spiders.”

Well, this could only mean one thing for us humans: time to tell your tarantulas how much you love them!

Back to the original question about music and tarantulas, there was actually a study done in Miami that showed spiders respond differently when listening to different genres. For example, when listening to classical music, spiders made their webs as close to the speaker as possible. When it was techno and rap music the spiders made their webs as far away from the speaker as possible. This may not have anything to do with the music itself, but more so about the air movement that the different music creates in the speakers. One person on Reddit explained this perfectly:

Spiders build their webs in places where there’s a lot of air movement so that they can catch insects. It would make sense that the air column from bass heavy music would allow them to put their webs further back.

Another study written about by Chris Buddle on arthropodecology.com stated this about orb weaving spiders:

Frings and Frings collected spiders (including the common orb-web species Araneus cavaticus, of “Charlotte’s Web” fame – it is Charlotte A. Cavatica don’t you know!), used a fancy laboratory set-up to make sounds (and vibrations), and measured responses by their study species.  For one species, the responses were the following ‘1) spasmodic extension of the front legs; (2) jerking of all the legs; (3) shaking the web vigorously by flexing and extending the legs’.

Results: indeed, their study species respond to airborne sounds, and their responses occur between 200 and 3000 cycles per second (Hertz) and between 90 and 110 decibels.

This is truly fascinating! While most of these studies were not done on tarantulas, it’s thought that similar responses would be found.

So can spiders hear?

While they may not hear in the same way we or other animals do, ABSOLUTELY! And now that we know that they DO pick up on sounds and vibrations, we are better able to care for our tarantulas!

By the way, check out my new tarantula magazine for more cool spider stuff:

I’m putting out issues every 2 months! If you’d like to be a part of that, you can visit the magazine’s Patreon page to subscribe or make a submission! You can also contact me at theavenmag@gmail.com for more info!

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