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Mar 7, 2012 · After a week of record rain, floodwaters across eastern Australia have forced the ground-dwelling spiders—and at least 13,000 people—to flee their homes, according to Reuters.The rampant webs...
Mar 7, 2012 · March 7, 2012. Thousands of normally solitary wolf spiders have blanketed an Australian farm after fleeing a rising flood. Reuters reports that the flooding has forced more than 8,000...
Jun 8, 2016 · In 2012, spiderwebs blanketed the countryside of Wagga Wagga, in eastern Australia, after a week of record rain forced the spiders—and 13,000 people—to flee their homes.
Mar 8, 2012 · March 8, 2012. Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia. Escaping spiders are fleeing the floods in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia, by moving to higher ground and building massive networks of interconnected spiderwebs, raised over sticks and bushes.
- Overview
- Wonders of Silk
In what's called a mass ballooning, the tiny arachnids used silk strands to catch air currents on their way to a new home.
Forget cats and dogs—it was raining spiders recently in southern Australia, according to local news reports.
Millions of spiders dropped from the sky in the Southern Tablelands region (map), blanketing the countryside with their webs. "They fly through the sky and then we see these falls of spiderwebs that look almost as if it's snowing," local resident Keith Basterfield told the Goulburn Post. (See "7 Bug and Spider Myths Squashed.")
Though many news reports have called them babies, the spiders are actually just "very, very small" adults called sheet-web weavers or money spiders, according to Robb Bennett, a research associate in entomology at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria.
It's unclear what spurs these spiders take to the skies in what are called mass ballooning events, Bennett notes.
But once they do, millions crawl to the highest points of their habitat—say a fence pole, or a tall plant—and send out silk strands that allow them to be lifted on air currents. (Also see "Photos: World's Biggest, Strongest Spider Webs Found.")
In 2012, record rains in the same Australian region spurred a mass ballooning event.
In that case, ballooning allowed the spiders "to move out of places where they'd surely be drowned," Robert Matthews, a professor emeritus of entomology at the University of Georgia, said of that event.
Producing large quantities of silk creates a sort of "vast trampoline" that supports the spiders as they're fleeing the water, he said. (Also see "Pictures: Trees Cocooned in Webs After Flood.")
Although acres of spiderwebs may gross out some arachnophobes, the impressive feat shows "the versatility of things [spiders] can do with silk," Matthews noted.
Silk has been a "huge evolutionary breakthrough," he said, and "this is one more example of why spiders have been a successful group."
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- Christine Dell'amore
Mar 19, 2012 · A barbed-wire fence is covered in spiderwebs, formed as spiders escape from flood waters, in Wagga Wagga, Australia, on March 7, 2012. The Murrumbidgee river slowly receded after reaching...
Mar 7, 2012 · The Murrumbidgee river this week threatened to breach levees at Wagga Wagga, in the NSW Riverina region, and thousands were forced from their homes.
