Did Spiders' Ancestors Come From The Ocean?

Short Wave

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🗓️ 25 July 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Whether you love spiders or can't be within 10 feet of them, you probably think of them crawling around on land. Historically, most researchers would probably say the same thing: Based on the fossil record, they've thought the earliest arachnid ancestors existed around 450 million years ago, living and diversifying exclusively on land. But a new study out this week in the journal Current Biology suggests arachnid brains may have originated much earlier in the ocean.

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0:31.7	Hi, I'm so glad to be back.
0:33.6	And I hear you've got some new research on why the ancestors of spiders may have originated
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