A sheer, silky blanket of one large spider web was captured hovering over a soccer field in Tauranga, New Zealand last week after flooding caused by Cyclone Cook.
Captured on camera by resident Tracey Maris, the spider web was estimated to span 30 metres wide.
“There was a bright glistening coming from the top of the mound – it looked almost like the hill was sparkling but we were unsure why,” said Maris.
Maris described the vision as “kind of yuck but really beautiful at the same time.”
At first, Maris and her family thought that small bugs were trapped in the giant cobweb, but upon closer inspection noticed that there were thousands of little spiders.
Maris said she screamed as soon as she saw the arachnids and her stepson came running over and spiders began to crawl up his legs. That’s when Maris took out her phone to film the phenomenon.
Arachnologist Cor Vink told the New Zealand Herald that spiders create large webs in search of higher ground during flooding events.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is [that] pasture full of spiders munching away on things and what they tend to do is move around by releasing a drag line of silk to help them in case they fall,” he said.
That silk is also used in a technique called “ballooning” where wind will pick up a spider with the silk and bring them to a different area.
Large swaths of spider silk enveloping a tree or field have been spotted in different parts of the world after floods hit areas such as Australia, Pakistan and the southern United States.
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