Image Credit: Nephila edulis by dilettantiquity, Flickr // CC BY SA 2.0
Arachnophobes, grab an umbrella. In one Australian town, itâs been raining spiders.
Let that sink in: Spiders. Falling. From. The. Sky.
The phenomenon, while inspiring for any would-be sci-fi horror writers out there, is a fairly routine part of spider migration that has been observed by scientists since Darwinâs time. In Goulburn , Australia, 120 miles from Sydney, residents recently described seeing âthis tunnel of webs going up for a couple of hundred meters into the sky.â The town was transformed into one big web-covered haunted house as black baby spiders fell from the air like snow. Â
To migrate, spiders send out silk threads that catch the wind and lift them aloft. They donât have any control over where they go, but can travel hundreds of miles , even landing on islands in the middle of the ocean (which might be why the eight-legged creatures can be found all over the world). A 2013 study by a University of Hawaii physicist postulated that the spiders may also harness the Earthâs electrostatic forces to fly even when there isnât wind.Â
Check out what a sky full of spiders looks like in this (admittedly shaky) video:
Ballooning is typically a seasonal behavior seen among small, young spiders, but on rare occasions larger adult spiders also cast out their silk and take off [ PDF ]. Such migrations are common in southeastern Australia , and have also been seen in recent years in Texas and Brazil . Nowhere in the world is safe from spider rain.Â
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