Meanwhile, in Australia, it’s raining spiders. Just when you thought there weren’t enough dangerous animals in Australia, residents of Goulburn, in the southern tablelands of New South Wales, have reported it’s raining spiders as thousands of the arachnids take to high grounds and jump, literally raining down on the township.
This is not the first report of it raining spiders, many cases have been reported in Australia before. In fact, it can occur anywhere in the world as recent reports of it raining spiders in Chicago can attest to.
The term for this effect is called ballooning and, according to ZME Science , it occurs when some species who are known to migrate via the air get too excited – usually because of optimum environmental conditions – and breed up in such large quantities that it appears to be raining spiders. This concept was bought to the big screen in a less horrific way via the children’s classic movie, Charlotte’s Web . The spiders can travel many kilometers via wind drafts and travel using a silk stream ejected from their body. In folklore, the resulting blanket of web left behind, blanketing everything in its path, is called “angel hair”. While it is unusual for these flying spiders to travel more than a few meters, there is evidence to suggest spiders getting as far as Antarctica and being caught in ships sails.
Goulburn local, Ian Watson, had this to say to the Sydney Morning Herald :
“The whole place was covered in these little black spiderlings and when I looked up at the sun it was like this tunnel of webs going up for a couple of hundred meters into the sky.”
Ian also described his house as looking “abandoned and taken over by spiders”. People then took to Twitter to show off their flying spider photos.
Raining spiders? It’s entirely possible http://t.co/B1fpVkp3lj pic.twitter.com/BaWg2Rj6Vq
— smh.com.au (@smh) May 14, 2015
Is That UFO Exhaust Or Is It Raining Spiders In Australia? – Forbes http://t.co/AhQ9yLmT24 — UFO Tracker (@UFOwTracker) May 19, 2015
Every continent has spiders, even Antarctica. It’s due to ‘ballooning’ says Martyn Robinson: http://t.co/HYbnDKDL6p pic.twitter.com/VfCgnY6qc1
— Australian Museum (@austmus) May 19, 2015
If you can stomach all the images of Australia’s raining spiders, you can also check out the following video (although this isn’t from the current spider infestation):
For people who have always thought Australia was fraught with a plethora of dangerous animals, can now add the fact it’s raining spiders to their long list of reasons not to book their next holiday there.
Do you live in the Goulburn area? If you have any webby spider images to share, let us know by commenting below!
[Image credits: Getty Images / Win McNamee and Twitter]
