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. This creepy crawly's aerial acrobatics are more advanced than mere gliding - it can change direction in mid-air.
According to a report on Mailonline, a group of scientists working in Peru and Panama, discovered the nocturnal spider that is able to glide and steer in mid-air, displaying remarkable agility for an arachnid.
In a video released by 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. We really did not expect to see gliding behavior in spiders. There are no winged spiders. Spiders don't fly.
"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," study leader, Stephen Yanoviak, a tropical arthropod ecologist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, told National Geographic.
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.