Spiders Cover Roadside with Web

Spiders have always creep people out with their long legs and fangs. But imagine driving down a common looking road only to find millions of spiders taking over the area.

 A whole army of spiders looking for shelter away from the floods in Hikurangi, New Zealand, flied to a portion of the Jordan Valley Road. The area turned white as the spiders spun their webs over the trees and ground. Ben Smith a resident of the Hikurangi Swamp area says that this strange phenomenon happens every year. The Hikurangi area is known to experience flood during the last few weeks of autumn and the spiders would stay near the Jordan Valley Road for about 2-3 weeks. Smith added that when the water rises, the spiders really have no other place to go. They do start dispersing as the water recedes into the swamp areas.

Ross Johnson, biosecurity officer for New Zealand’s Northern RegionalCouncil said that the baby moneyspiders are the main culprits of the spider takeover. During the late autumn and early winter weeks, the spiderlings would each make a long strand of silk. They use these to get drifted off by the winds and get transported to long distances away from the water.

Everything gets covered in silk when the spiders start moving up to higher ground. The spiders could cover trees, gates, even tractors with a thin blanket of their silk. These spiders are also capable of making different kinds of silk. The ballooning silk they produce is different compared to the ones they normally make to build their webs.