Residents in the rural area of southern Minas Gerais in Brazil woke up to warm weather with a bit of spider raining down the sky.
A video showing hundreds of the eight-legged creatures seemingly floating in the air has been circling the internet this week. The clip was taken by João Pedro Martinelli Fonseca who, together with his family, was visiting his grandparents' farm in the region outside of the capital São Paulo when he noticed the phenomenon.
An Arachnophobe's Nightmare
In an interview with a local newspaper, Fonseca said that when he saw the spiders, he was "stunned and scared," especially after a few of the creatures fell from their web and into their open window.
However, for the boy's grandmother, Jercina Martinelli, it was just a normal, warm morning.
"There were many more webs and spiders than you can see in the video," she shared. "We've seen this before, always at dusk on days when it's been really hot."
According to Adalberto dos Santos, a biology professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, while the spiders look like their floating, they are actually hanging from a giant web they built above ground. The work of these hundreds of spiders is so fine that the webs are almost invisible to the human eye.
The species of spiders is called Parawixia bistriata. Dos Santos explained that the community of spiders likely nest in the vegetation and then emerged in the early evening to build their giant web in the sky. Overnight, insects or sometimes, even small birds, get trapped into the massive web. The spiders have their feast around dawn and then retreat to the vegetation.
The scene is pretty common in the area when the weather is hot and humid like right now, as it is summer in Brazil.
Nothing To Fear
Dos Santos assured that the spiders nor their giant web in the sky will not harm the residents of the Minas Gerais. In fact, the expert said that the presence of the community of spiders is more beneficial to the area because the creatures regulate the mosquito population that also thrives when the weather is hot and humid.
"They benefit us far more than they harm us," he added.
