First the floods, now the spiders! MILLIONS of spiders fleeing floodwaters create massive web blankets to pull themselves to safety
- Incredible photos show whole trees covered in spider webs in Tasmania
- Spiders use a technique called ballooning to escape floodwaters
- They using threads of web to catch wind and get carried away
Recent flooding in Australia has sent countless spiders fleeing to higher ground - and producing amazing scenes of massive webs entirely covering trees.
Images of trees engulfed in webs dotted with thousands of spiders have been captured at Westbury, near Launceston, Tasmania, which has been battered by the worst storms in 42 years.
The situation is an arachnophobe's nightmare.
A large white web dotted with thousands of spiders engulfs a tree in Tasmania after flooding
Here, numerous trees shrouded in spider webs and surrounded by floodwaters shows the extend of the webs
Spider expert Graham Milledge said 'ballooning' webs were not common but could be seen after events such as flooding (stock photo)
Spiders have been using a technique called ballooning - using small strings of web to catch a ride to safety on the winds, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Graham Milledge, the collection manager in arachnology at the Australian Museum, said: 'People don't realise how many spiders there are out there until you see events like this'.
'What they do is they climb up to a high vantage point - up to the end of a stalk of grass for example - and then they point their abdomen to the sky and let out a silk thread. The wind captures that and acts like a parachute and carries them off.'
Ballooning en masse was seen with events like the present flooding, but was not common.
Mr Milledge said the small spiders were often juvenile, and mostly harmless.
They'd disperse once the flooding was over, he said.
Mr Milledge said spiders made the webs by climbing up high, pointing their abdomen towards the sky and then shooting out silk threads
The spiders were simply trying to escape the flooding in Tasmania, where scenes like this, in Cataract Gorge in Launceston, have been captured
Almost 4,000 residents and 800 businesses are in danger from raging flood waters as Launceston, Tasmania's second largest city, remains on high alert. Above is the Cataract Gorge in Launceston
The disaster - the worst in the state since 1929 - has already claimed the life of a woman whose home was inundated, and two men are missing after being swept away by flood waters
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