Why does this spider jump when you point at it with your iPhone

In this viral videowhat looks like a spider in a jar jumps up every time the girl pictured in the foreground touches her iPhone screen to pop the image.

It’s not actually a spider, but a type of solifog, spiders of a different order than spiders and scorpions which, to complicate matters a bit, are known as “camel spiders” or “wind scorpions.” They do not know how to weave, they are not poisonous and can be distinguished from spiders by their huge jaws. Maybe that’s why they are so scary?

Whatever the case, these girls put Solvog in a jar and discovered that they seemed to get nervous when they tried to take pictures of him with the iPhone 12 Pro, the first model to include LiDAR in the rear camera. The LiDAR scanner emits infrared rays to measure the distance to different objects in an image and interpret their depth.

The human eye can see what is known as visible light, electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths from 380 to 750 nanometers. Infrared radiation is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than visible light, and therefore is invisible to the human eye. The TV remote control works with infrared rays that we can sometimes capture with our portable camera. The Face ID system in the front camera of the iPhone shoots thousands of invisible infrared dots to study your facial features. iPhone LiDAR Scanner works similarly pulses of wavelength 940 nm.

Many animals, such as snakes, bats, bugs, mosquitoes, and some species of beetles, can see in the near infrared, and perhaps that’s what happens with this single element, because it gives the impression that the LiDAR rays take you through them all of a sudden.

However, spiders and many other insects are known for their ability to see ultraviolet rays. A wandering spider, for example, can Perception of wavelengths between 389.9 and 654 nanometers, which would not explain this sensitivity to LiDAR. So what we can make clear from the viral video is that this is not a spider, and spiders are not known to see in infrared, but rather in ultraviolet and green..

And while we don’t know what this solifuge would be without serious study to explain it, we can make it invisible, in this case you can make it out of your iPhone’s LiDAR scanner, Visible by infrared camera. Curious to see what happens in infrared when we take the phone out of the pocket.