If you're worried about spiders crawling up your legs or scuttling across your pillow at night, then you might want to shut your window too.

An arachnophobe's worst nightmare has been realised after a spider that can fly has been discovered in the jungles of South America.

And this creepy crawly's aerial acrobatics are more advanced than mere gliding - it can change direction in mid-air.

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Geronimo! Researchers dropped spiders from trees in Peru and Panama and discovered the 'flattie' spider was able to steer its way back to the truck, changing direction in mid-air

A group of scientists working in Peru and Panama have discovered the nocturnal spider that is able to glide and steer in mid-air, displaying remarkable agility for an arachnid.

In a video released buy the researchers, the spider, which is about two inches across, can be seen changing direction as it falls through the air, guiding its way with its extended legs.

The discovery came as a shock to researchers, who say there are no other instances of a spider displaying this kind of mid-air steering.

THE AERIAL ARACHNIDS To conduct the study, the researchers had to climb trees searching for the notoriously well camouflaged spiders, known as 'flatties' due to their very flat body shape. The then dropped them from 65 to 80 feet (20 to 25 meters) from trees and filmed them maneuvering in the air. The researchers say the spiders are more agile in the air than a cat, turning themselves right-side-up in milliseconds and pointing their heads downward to glide. 'This study, like the first report of gliding ants, raises many questions that are wide open for further study.' Yanoviak said. 'For instance, how acute is the vision of these spiders? How do they target a tree? What is the effect of their hairs or spines on aerodynamic performance?' Advertisement

'We really did not expect to see gliding behavior in spiders,' study leader Stephen Yanoviak, a tropical arthropod ecologist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, told National Geographic.

'There are no winged spiders. Spiders don't fly,' he added.

The spider, from the genus Selenops, joins a small group of non-winged creepy crawlies that have the ability to maneuvre in mid-air instead of falling like a stone.

'My guess is that many animals living in the trees are good at aerial gliding, from snakes and lizards to ants and now spiders,' said Robert Dudley, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the authors of a paper.

'If a predator comes along, it frees the animal to jump if it has a time-tested way of gliding to the nearest tree rather than landing in the understory or in a stream.'

A group of scientists working in Peru and Panama have discovered the nocturnal spider that is able to glide and steer in mid-air, displaying remarkable agility for an arachnid

For a tree dwelling spider, the ability to guide your way back to the trunk of the tree that you fell from is a valuable tool fro avoiding predators, according to the researchers.

Dudley and Yanoviak have been studying gliding insects in tropical forests for a decade after discovering an ant that always manages to land on a tree when knocked off a branch to avoid predators on the forest floor.

This discovery has led the two to conduct bizarre experiments, throwing all manner of arthropods - the broad family that covers insects and spiders - out of trees to see how they fare.

'As far as adult arthropods are concerned, only ants, bristletails and spiders use directed aerial descent,' Yanoviak said.

'However, the wingless immature stages of various insects that are winged as adults can also glide really well. These include cockroaches, mantids, katydids, stick insects and true bugs.'

It is a bird? is it a plane? No, it's a SPIDER: To conduct the study, the researchers had to climb trees searching for the notoriously well camouflaged spiders, known as 'flatties' due to their very flat body shape

To conduct the study, the researchers had to climb trees searching for the notoriously well camouflaged spiders, known as 'flatties' due to their very flat body shape.

The then dropped them from 65 to 80 feet (20 to 25 meters) from trees and filmed them maneuvering in the air.

The researchers say the spiders are more agile in the air than a cat, turning themselves right-side-up in milliseconds and pointing their heads downward to glide.

And the most adept spiders were able to steer their way back to the trunk after falling just 13 feet (4 meters).

'This study, like the first report of gliding ants, raises many questions that are wide open for further study.' Yanoviak said. 'For instance, how acute is the vision of these spiders? How do they target a tree? What is the effect of their hairs or spines on aerodynamic performance?'