Holy Cow! Spider Rain In Australia! Ever Heard Such A Thing?

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.