If I were to stick your head underwater and hold it there, you’d be dead within several minutes, depending upon your lung capacity. I’d then be sent to prison for murder, so this example has problems, but the point is, your survival skills suck compared to the marsh-dwelling wolf spider.
As reported in the journal Biology Letters, scientists have discovered that the wolf spider can enter a self-induced coma and survive underwater for up to 24-hours, with 16-hours being the average time of survival.
Spiders are known for their resilience to being underwater, so it was no surprise to him that the dozens of Arctosa Fulvolineata in the experiment took almost 24 hours to grow still. What did surprise him is the dead-still spiders then came back to life.
As they lay drying in Petillion’s laboratory at the University of Rennes in France, something odd happened: the ‘dead’ spiders began to twitch. First one small movement, then another — before long the salt marsh spiders were skittering about as though nothing had happened.
“It was really a surprise,” Petillon said. “We did not suspect the spiders could go into a coma.”
