Peter Jäger, a spider expert at Frankfurt. I remember when I didn't even know what a flic-flac was! Hard to believe, ay? These acrobatics are used to ostentatiously escape predators, but add a few saltos and tucks and I reckon they could make the gymnastics team! Yeah, I'm pretty much a gymnastics expert now. In this way it can travel almost 2 metres (6.5 ft) per second, about twice as fast as it could by mere walking. The spider cartwheels, indeed, flic-flacs, across the sand, somersaulting along with a push from its legs. Ingo Rechenberg, head of the Department of Bionics and Evolution Techniques in Berlin. The Moroccan Flic-flac Spider was discovered by one Prof.

That's why this spider uses her silk to construct a comfortable, sandy tube in which to spend the days. I'm pretty sure the entire thing would usually be underground The Flic-flac Spider lives on the sand dunes of Morocco's Erg Chebbi, a massive sea of purest desert with scarcely a pebble to mar the fine grains of its wind-sculpted surface.Ī burrow. Thus, the first thing I ever knowingly saw do a flic-flac had 8 legs. Turns out it's that back flip, somersault thing the parkour guys do repeatedly on their way to the shops. What I'm really trying to say is that I had NO IDEA what on earth a 'flic-flac' was. After the Mauritanian Flim-flam Beetle and the Austro-Hungarian Wibble-wobble Toad, we've finally found ourselves a Moroccan Flic-flac Spider.Īctually I made most of those up.

Flic flac spider gif