If you’re afraid of spiders, a new study published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports might not come as welcome news.
Researchers at the University of Manchester have trained a regal jumping spider named “Kim” to leap on demand. It’s the first time a spider has been successfully trained to jump.
Unlike domesticated pets like dogs, spiders typically don't eat more than once a week. This made training them to jump a difficult task because they couldn’t be as easily incentivized by food.
“She would eat a cricket per week, so we couldn’t use a rewards system [to train her],” study author Mostafa R.A. Nabawy says. “And if we just gave her prey, then she would only jump motivated by the