A pair of researchers, one with Notre Dame University-Louaize, the other the University of California, has developed a model that suggests some small spiders may become airborne due to electrostatic forces acting on multiple spider-generated threads. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, Charbel Habchi and Mohammad Khalid Jawed, describe how they used data from prior experiments and an algorithm developed by the movie industry to accurately portray animated hair to simulate "ballooning" in spiders.