The hair on the skin of Peru purple tarantulas can soak up crude oil Machalowski et al, Journal of Environmental Management (2020), copyright Elsevier 2020
A sea of floating, dead tarantula skins might be an arachnophobe’s nightmare, but the moults of these spiders could help mop up ocean oil spills.
Spider skins have “very strong” water-repelling properties, says Tomasz MachaĹ‚owski at PoznaĹ„ University of Technology in Poland, one of the team behind the concept. This means they could be useful for cleaning-up oil spills, as the materials used need to attract oil but also repel water to stop them from…
