MIGRATING SPIDERS SAIL THROUGH THE SKY

 

September 2013, TEXAS - Thousands of North Texans were asking, “What are those long, silky strings floating in the air?” 

 

Turns out they were the webs of spiders in their annual migration to better hunting grounds, and surprising a lot of people.

 

“I thought it was weird; I’d never seen it before,” said Myrna Olivas, who first noticed it driving in her car; then later as she dropped her son off at school.  “It just landed on my head and it left again,” she said adding, “It’s just a big stripe of spider web.  I couldn’t recognize it until I got it closer to me.”

 

They’re called “ballooning” or “floating” webs made by young, migrating spiders. 

 

“There’s some that produce a ball like a balloon, and there’s some they call tent spiders because they create almost like a triangle,” according to Texas A&M Agrilife horticulturist Patrick Dickinson.

 

They were strung across North Texas in trees or on lamp posts, even on a surveillance camera atop Dallas City Hall.  Car dealers washed them off their prize offerings.

 

Dickinson says the migration is so widespread it can be witnessed across the globe. 

 

“In Brazil they do it this time of year when they look for the flight of the spiders, and the skies will literally be clouded by the shrouds of these strings from the spiders.”

Read more, see picture, video - http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/09/25/spider-migration-sailing-through-north-texas-skies/

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