Moroccan Flic-flac Spider

Image: Prof. Dr. Rechenberg
Cebrennus rechenbergi

THIS. This is what we've all been waiting for. After the Mauritanian Flim-flam Beetle and the Austro-Hungarian Wibble-wobble Toad, we've finally found ourselves a Moroccan Flic-flac Spider.

The prophecy is fulfilled.

Image: Prof. Dr. Rechenberg

Actually I made most of those up. What I'm really trying to say is that I had NO IDEA what on earth a "flic-flac" was. Turns out it's that back flip, somersault thing the parkour guys do repeatedly on their way to the shops. Thus, the first thing I ever knowingly saw do a flic-flac had 8 legs. Good!

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.

Image: Prof. Dr. Rechenberg
A burrow. I'm pretty sure the entire thing would usually be underground

That's why this spider uses her silk to construct a comfortable, sandy tube in which to spend the days. She emerges at night to hunt for food.

The Moroccan Flic-flac Spider was discovered by one Prof. Dr. Ingo Rechenberg, head of the Department of Bionics and Evolution Techniques in Berlin. I would love to have seen his face!

Video: Sandskink

The spider cartwheels, indeed, flic-flacs, across the sand, somersaulting along with a push from its legs. In this way it can travel almost 2 metres (6.5 ft) per second, about twice as fast as it could by mere walking. It can even somersault uphill!

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. It wasn't always like this. I remember when I didn't even know what a flic-flac was! Hard to believe, ay?

Video: biotechgermany
Prof. Dr. Rechenberg and his spider friend

Prof. Dr. Rechenberg sent a specimen on to Dr. Peter Jäger, a spider expert at Frankfurt. Dr. Jäger did what most spider experts do. He took out a microscope and carefully analysed some spider sex organs to see if it was a new species.

Image: Prof. Dr. Rechenberg
At the mouth of her burrow

It was. It's also the only one known to flic-flac, so from now on that will be the more entertaining and less intrusive way of identifying it.

Meanwhile, Prof. Dr. Rechenberg did what I guess anyone at the Department of Bionics and Evolution Techniques would have done. He made a robot.

Image: Prof. Dr. Rechenberg

It's a robot that can both walk and roll, just like the spider. He reckons it might one day roll across the ocean floor or the surface of Mars. He calls it the Tabbot, coming from Tabacha, which means "spider" in the North African Berber language.

This is what we call "division of labour"; the guy looking at genitalia is not the guy making robots. I don't know what robot spider sex organs would look like but I don't think we'd want to see it rolling around anywhere.

.....

Thanks to Will and Dimitri for bringing this one to my attention!