To test an evo-devo hypothesis about the legs of arachnids.
Next question?
And even if they could I think they wouldn’t do well. They have long legs for good reasons. For one, it’s a defense mechanism. A predator is more likely to seize a leg than the body, and they can go without; in some they even break off and keep moving. Some also wipe noxious secretions on them to keep things like ants at arm’s length, and it helps for that arm to be long.
They’re actually very impressive bugs in my opinion. I’m not sure why anyone would imagine that if short legs were at all better for their survival, evolution wouldn’t have hit on that simple change at some point in the last several hundred million years.
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