This news is dated 18th May, 2015 (published by The Sydney Morning Herald).
Read the original story here.... Read the original news story here...
It seems like the biggest nightmare you thought of is
true now! Baby Spider rain!! Eeeksss!
But yes, it is true and has happened in Australia. The whole
area in Southern Tablelands of Australia looks like a giant spider web. The
numbers range in millions. It seems like a spider attach from nature's side and
the residents are scared.
Experts are debating on various theories and possibilities
and there is hope that this mass migration will disperse on its own.
Naturalist Martyn Robinson from the Australian Museum said
two migration techniques associated with spiders would explain why locals might
have thought it was raining spiders.
The first, a dispersal technique called
"ballooning", is more commonly used by baby spiders, although some
adults use it as well. The spider climbs to the top of vegetation and releases
a streamer of silk that catches on the breeze and carries the spider aloft.
Spiders have been caught flying like this up to
three kilometers above the ground, Robinson said.
"They can literally travel for kilometers …
which is why every continent has spiders. Even in Antarctica they
regularly turn up but just die," he said.
"That's also why the first land animals to arrive on new
islands formed by volcanic activity are usually spiders."
In some years, the mass migration of baby spiders means
"you can have entire fields and paddocks and trees festooned with this
gossamer or Angel Hair, as some people call it," he said.
Gossamer is a non-adhesive silk that snags easily, one of
nine different kinds of silks produced by spiders.
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