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It’s amazing how much we still don know about spiders although they have always coexisted with humans. One long-standing riddle concerned how spiders sense odors. Now, a research at last reveal the secret.
In a study reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers showed that male spiders detect the sex pheromones emitted by female spiders using olfactory hairs called wall-pore sensilla on their legs as a “nose.”
The study ends a ten-year investigation for these rare sensilla, which have now been located and mapped. It also presents chances for thorough research on the mechanism behind spider olfaction.
While spiders are renowned for their vibratory sense and some, such as jumping spiders, for their exceptional vision, their sense of smell is surprisingly understudied, despite their evolutionary existence of approximately 400 million years. There is an abundance of evidence indicating that spiders are capable of detecting odors, including sex pheromones. However, there are still two significant concerns that have yet to be resolved.
First, what is their main olfactory organ as spiders lack antennae as insects? Second, earlier research indicated that spiders lack the specific structures insects depend on for scent—wall-pore sensilla. Without these, how then do spiders sense smells at all?
The research has answered long-standing puzzles. On the walking legs of male wasp spiders (Argiope bruennichi), the researchers found previously unnoticed wall-pore sensilla and showed how highly sensitively they could detect airborne sex pheromones.
Researchers demonstrated that the wall-pore sensilla are common across the spider tree of life rather than exclusive of wasp spiders.
Sources:
Mohammad Belal Talukder et al. (2025). Olfaction with legs—Spiders use wall-pore sensilla for pheromone detection, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2415468121
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-spiders-legs.html
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