Spiders hard at work spinning webs in Tatuanui
Some would have considered it a wonder of nature, while for others it would have been their worst nightmare coming true.
Thousands or perhaps even millions of tiny spiders were hard at work spinning their webs in Tatuanui, last week.
It seemed to be confined to a paddock across the road from Tatua Dairy Factory, but after posting photos on Facebook, reports came flooding in from Matamata-Piako locals who said they had webs everywhere from their gates to their clotheslines.
It’s a phenomenon that crops up in many different parts of the world and has quite a simple explanation.
When a low-lying area floods, a spider’s survivor instinct kicks in to retreat to higher ground.
Some small spiders make small silk parachutes and are blown by the wind to safety, while others leave behind a kind of safety line of silk as they climb to a higher point.
‘‘If lots of them do it, you end up with a layer of silk,’’ Canterbury Museum’s Cor Vink said.
As well as being the museum’s natural history curator, Vink is also a spider expert.
‘‘They aren’t building a web. They’re just trying to escape flooding. There are just so many of them,’’ he said.
Vink said spiders could spin various kinds of silk.
‘‘If they’re climbing up on something high some can lay down a dragline as they walk along. If they fall they can pick themselves back up.’’
Some spiders created a kind of balloon to take them to higher ground.
‘‘They move to a higher point ... then release a long strand of silk out from behind them. Wind currents catch that and they float along on the wind currents to land on something higher,’’ Vink said.
‘‘When a low-lying area floods, a spider's survivor instinct kicks in to retreat to higher ground.’’
Many types of spiders used the balloon technique, some only in the smaller stages of their life.
‘‘Some species do it right through to adulthood because they’re small enough,’’ he said.
‘‘A lot of spiders just move around that way. There’s a lot of pasture spiders that move around that way.’’
The retreat of spiders to higher ground to escape flooding was not unexpected, but it was nice to see there were plenty of them around, Vink said. ‘‘That’s always good.’’