California State University, Monterey Bay professor John Banks says the phenomenon is known as “ballooning.” In the webs are baby spiders looking for a new home.
People in some areas of California are noticing spiders falling from the sky.
Spiders are parachuting down in silky balloons, leaving stringy sticky webs all over Northern California neighborhoods. The bizarre phenomenon is happening just in time for Halloween.
Brook Shadwell recorded videos of the phenomenon.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Shadwell tells Inside Edition. “At first I actually thought it was the fake spider webs that you buy at, like, a Halloween store and they are just everywhere but then they were falling out of, like, the sky.”
There is a scientific explanation for the occurrence. California State University, Monterey Bay professor John Banks says inside of those webs are baby spiders looking for new places to live.
“The term that we use for this process is ballooning. They stick their abdomen up and they exude a little string of silk, and then they can make a little parachute, and that parachute then can help them catch the wind and fly where they might find more to eat or they might get away from things that want to eat them.”
Up to 15 percent of Americans have arachnophobia, a fear of spiders.
