Independent on Saturday

Town left covered in spider webs after floods in Australia

LATESHIA BEACHUM

AN AUSTRALIAN region has been caught in webs of thousands of spiders after severe floods that have forced people – and arachnids – to find drier land.

The region of Gippsland in Victoria has been whipped with 124km/h winds and torrential rain storms since last week, forcing some residents to evacuate and killing two, Yahoo News Australia reported.

The spiders are part of what looks like a biblical plague of critters to hit Australia this year after droughts and floods that unleashed hordes of mice chewing their way across agricultural areas, leaving devastated crops in their wake.

Ken Walker, a senior curator of entomology at the Melbourne Museum, told The Guardian that the countless number of webs happened about once a year and that the sight was beautiful.

“Spiders can make a wide range of different silks and one of the silks they use for this behaviour – ballooning – it’s a very, very thin little silk that they use to fly away with the breeze. They could fly 100km.”

Dieter Hochuli, an ecologist from the University of Sydney, told 7 News that the ground-dwelling sheetweb spiders were doing essentially what people do when their homes were no longer habitable – move to higher ground.

The spiders are harmless to humans and are known to build horizontal webs under rocks, a practice that led to their name.

“One of the really interesting things about it is that it shows us what’s always happening beneath our noses, in a vibrant ecosystem that is very much out of sight, out of mind,” he said. “We just don’t realise how much is going on.”

The sight has been captivating users across social media, who either admire the fine silk shrouds or find them horrifying.

Carolyn Crossley, a local councillor, posted a widely shared video of webs flowing in the wind along with a donation link to the emergency relief fund helping to clean up the hard-hit flood areas.

“We can see mother nature can be beautiful, but she can also be destructive,” she said.

Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp told The Guardian the clean-up crews could be there much longer than the spiders who’ve parachuted themselves on to dry land.

“These threads are so thin, usually as soon as the first breeze comes along, they get quickly broken up and dispersed,” he said.

METRO

en-za

2021-06-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

http://independentonsaturday.pressreader.com/article/281560883750431

African News Agency