Residents of a small town in Australia were shocked when millions of baby spiders were spotted raining from the sky.
People living in the town of Goulburn in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia woke up to find their gardens and homes were covered in a dense layer of cobwebs, crawling with the tiny arachnids. It may sounds like the plot of a horror movie, but this is actually a natural occurrence known as “Angel Hair” or “Spider Rain.”
The phenomenon sees spiders climb to the top of vegetation and release a stream of silk which catches on the breeze and carries them on the wind. Known as “ballooning,” the makeshift parachutes allow the eight-legged creatures to travel great distances, and spiders have reportedly been seen as far as 1,600 km or 900 miles from land.
While the bizarre phenomenon has a scientific explanation, having your entire town blanketed in spider webs is surely a strange experience.
“The whole place was covered in these little black spider-lings 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,” resident Ian Watson told local media. “But at the same time I was annoyed because you couldn’t go out without getting spider webs on you. And I’ve got a beard as well, so they kept getting in my beard.”
Interestingly, there’s a phenomenon opposite to Angel Hair, which can happen at around the same time as ballooning, after heavy rains or a flood.
“When the ground gets waterlogged, the spiders that live either on the surface of the ground or in the burrows in the ground, come up into the foliage to avoid drowning,” said Australian naturalist Martyn Robinson. “These ground spiders also throw silk ‘snag lines’ up into the air, and when they catch, use the lines to come up from the ground to avoid drowning.”
Thankfully, none of the ballooning spiders are poisonous or pose a threat to humans.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Robinson said. “They’ll all disperse once the weather conditions warm up.”
After primarily being concerned about all the spiders, it now seems as though the residents at Goulburn are happily living alongside them, having accepted their new arachnid overlords.
Here’s a video explaining the fascinating Spider Rain phenomenon:
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