Humans have a biological clock on their brains. Every day, there are ups and downs of hormones that force us to sleep and wake up. This clock follows the 24 hours of Earth's rotation.
In addition to humans, most of the circadian rhythms (rotation of time in one day, red) other living beings are also 24 hours. However, that does not apply to all living things.
Summarized from the Washington Post on November 14, 2017, not long ago, biologists discovered a distortion of circadian rhythms in the forest. They found three Cyclosa spider species that have a life cycle of only 17 to 19 hours.
"We've found the shortest period we suspect there must be some odd flexibility in the spider's clock that causes this to happen.This is crazy," said Darrell Moore, a neurobiologist who studied invertebrates from East Tennessee State University in a presentation at the Society for Neuroscience conference at Washington, United States.
Just like us, scientists found that exposure to light resets the spider's clock. However, this spider experienced a shift of hours that is very far from normal.
Natalia Toporikova, professor of biology at the University of Lee, Virginia, and a colleague in the study called this animal "a spider without jet lag." The reason, this animal can miss five time zones at once, but not at all disturbed his life.
Actually, Moore is investigating what makes this spider can have two-time cycles when it finds Cyclosa's short circadian rhythms.
Just like other Araneidae family members, this spider also makes a circular web. However, Cyclosa also built a kind of debris or ruins containing dead insects, dirt, and leaf litter in the center of the net.
During the day, they will hide in the middle of the ruins and not move to avoid the predators. They will then wake up at night and become very active in fixing the net and cleaning up the garbage for three to five hours before sunrise.
Biologists catch wild spiders to be taken to the lab and insert them into transparent tubes. At the end of each tube, given infrared sensors. Every time the spider passes through the sensor, they will fall.
This is the way scientists use to measure when the spider is active and resting during normal light cycles.
A few days later, researchers put spiders in the dark for weeks.
In total darkness, when most living things return to their normal biological clock, the spider actually shows a brief period.
Moore has early findings related to other species of spider. A small number of species have very long periods, up to 29 hours. While the Black Widow spider has an arithmetic time cycle or no rhythm. Perhaps this reflects their fondness for being in the shadows.
According to research that has been done, mice and mutant flies are also shown to have a short time of day, but unlike the Cyclosa spider
"It is clear that the three species are very sensitive to the light that regulates the circadian cycle, but we do not know yet what kind of biological mechanisms govern the spider," Moore said.
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