"Raining spiders" has recently been reported in sunny California. Several residents claimed that they were seeing webs with spiderlings falling from the skies.
Raining Spiders in California?
There were several videos on social media of what appeared to be white structures floating in the air and sticking to the ground and buildings. A Californian local posted a video on TikTok requesting assistance from the public in solving the riddle of the disappearing webs. According to her in the video, it is sticky [and] silky and is falling from the sky. She said that the telephone poles were covered in webbing and that "it is the weirdest thing." She added that the webs were similar to fake spider webs that one can buy for Halloweens. However, they were falling from the sky.
A biologist responded by explaining the bizarre phenomenon. According to Fred Larabee, an assistant professor of biology at San Jose State University, the white webbing people see are strands of silk that spiderlings or baby spiders use to disperse. He added that the spiders spin these silk strands to escape their original habitats, and when the wind catches them, it carries the spiders to other locations where they can avoid competition with their siblings.
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Another person said the webs smelled of chemicals, burning like plastic, and burst into a fireball when they lit it.
John E. Banks, a professor at California State University, Monterey Bay, stressed that what people see is a phenomenon known as "ballooning." According to Banks, when spiders are scared or out of food, they spin silk strands caught in the wind and carried to a different site.
We have a specific term for how spiders move from one environment to another. As you may imagine, most spiders find it challenging to navigate obstacles like Highway 1 or any of the constructions we erected and move over the ground, he added.
Additionally, Banks suggested that it might be a survival strategy spiders use in agricultural areas where their food supply is erratic.
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What Is Ballooning?
Spiders cannot fly, but they can nevertheless move through the air. They ascend to a vulnerable point, extend their abdomens toward the sky, extrude silk strands, and float away. We refer to this phenomenon as "ballooning." It may move spiders to new regions with abundant resources or away from predators and rivals. Whatever the case, it's unquestionably a useful mode of transportation for spiders and explains why they have been discovered 1,000 miles at sea and 2.5 miles in the air.
It's a frequent misconception that ballooning works because the wind pulls along the spider once the silk catches on the wind. However, that doesn't make sense, particularly given that spiders only balloon under light winds.
Since spiders don't discharge silk from their bellies, it appears implausible that such light gusts could be powerful enough to drag the threads out, let alone lift the largest species into the air or produce the high accelerations necessary for arachnid flight. Young naturalist Charles Darwin considered the spiders' quickness of flight to be "quite unaccountable" and their origin to be "inexplicable."
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