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Swarms of spiders flee into homes to escape NSW floods
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ilaksh 6y agoAfter the plague of mice, the flooding, and now the spider infestation..I would just move back to Wales at this point.
- wsc981 6y agoSince you mention plague ... Looking at the screenshots and video in the article I kinda wondered if an event like this (flooding) might have been an originator of some Biblical plague stories from Genesis [0]. --- [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_of_Egypt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_of_Egypt
- ilaksh 6y agoYes, it's definitely the type of thing that inspired that story and others like it. Of course it doesn't only happen in Australia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths
- TheChaplain 6y agoSydney area is also the home of the funnel-web spider, a rather venomous and very aggressive spider. I'm not afraid of spiders but that one makes my neck-hairs rise.
- shakna 6y agoWorth noting that an antivenom for the funnel-web was created in the early 80s [0], and Australia hasn't seen a single death since. Its still more than a one day stay in hospital, but it isn't likely to cause a fatality if you actually seek treatment. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_funnel-web_spider#Treatment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_funnel-web_spider#T...
- 4gotunameagain 6y ago> The venom is needed to produce the antivenom.. The venom is taken from the spiders by delicately stroking their fangs and collecting the tiny droplets of the deadly venom. One dose of antivenom requires around 70 milkings from a spider. > Funnel web spider antivenom is prepared from the plasma of rabbits immunized with the venom of the male funnel web spider (Atrax robustus). Each vial of the product contains 125 units of antivenom which has been standardized to neutralize 1.25 mg of funnel web spider venom. The product also contains glycine and other rabbit plasma proteins. o.O
- airhead969 6y agoYep. If the huntsman spider doesn't freak you out, the FWS should.
- Clewza313 6y agoHuntsmen are creepy looking, but essentially harmless. (Unless you're another bug, which is why it's nice to have a few around.)
- airhead969 6y agoAhah. They are so creepy looking. They pretty much have faces, coats, and top hats. I just don't want to think what kind of bugs are around to need a nightmare fuel spider around.
- hilbert42 6y agoYes, they are. It's a bit unnerving to have one on one's bedroom wall and be lying there and stairing up at it (they love climbing up high). But at least you can see a Huntsman, on the other hand Funnel-webs rarely leave the floor (so they often hide in shoes, etc.). People get bitten that way (as a kid I was taught to always look in my shoes before putting them on). If you don't like the look of Huntsman spiders then you'd probably not like to have a jar with a Funnel-web in it on your desk (as I mentioned above). Funnel-webs really do look creepy, that's part of their fascination.
- kingo55 6y agoExactly. Huntsmen are like daddy long legs compared to FWS.
- byhemechi 6y agoHuntsmen are harmless. The easiest way to get rid of one is to just pick it up by a leg.
- hilbert42 6y agoFrom time to time one of my staff would catch a male Atrax robustus† in his backyard and bring it to work. I'd create a home for the spider out of a very large jar by placing in it rocks and sufficient dirt for him to make his funnel-web home. Funnel-webs would happily live there for well over year, and we'd feed them on live slaters (wood lice) and occasionally other insects (we only ever kept one at a time). The jar used to take pride of place on my office desk and sometimes visitors who came to my office were somewhat unnerved by it. Every morning when I came into my office and switched on the lights he'd rise up in an aggressive pose (as in the photo in the link below). To impress visitors, I'd poke a pencil through the air vents holes in the jar's lid then he'd immediately attack it and you could see venom running down the side of the pencil. After a while that pencil—which was kept specifically for the purpose—ended up rather pockmarked. We kept a number of them over the years but only males, as they are not only more deadly than the females but also they're considerably more aggressive. I've more stories about them. When I was a kid, I had one on the back of my hand but luckily I wasn’t bitten. Once I'd been bushwalking and after climbing out of a valley at night I pointed my flashlight to the ground and saw that I was in a midst of multiple nests of females some of whom were out of their nests and roaming near my feet. I was so physically exhausted I didn't even bother moving. Another instance was when one bit someone who I knew vaguely. This was in the days before the availability of antivenene and he was very seriously ill despite being immediately taken to hospital (he ended up with pulmonary oedema and other complications and nearly died). † https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrax_robustus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrax_robustus
- bongoman37 6y ago"grizzly story" the standards of writing have fallen quite a bit for people who are supposed to be writers.
- willyt 6y agoThat paragraph is not the journalist's writing, it's a quote, presumably transcribed from a verbal interview.
- abiogenesis 6y agoHow is this an excuse to spell "grisly" as "grizzly"?
- jkhdigital 6y agoYes, which means the journalist who transcribed the interview chose the wrong homophone for this particular word.
- alexgmcm 6y agoIt's known as "The Grauniad" for a reason.
- pvaldes 6y agoCute wolf spiders, like Pardosa sp. that is the key terrestrial predator in arctic areas. More biomass than all polar bears and wolves combined and more influential than those for the ecosystem.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoIIRC I was just reading about an explosion of mice populations in Australia...
- NullPrefix 6y agoWas it the same article mentioning that people are praying for a flood to drown all the mice in the fields?
- krylon 6y agoOh my, I would completely freak out if my home was overrun by spiders. There is a vibrating spider living in my bedroom, and I already get slightly nervous whenever it moves away from its regular spot.
- bigwheeler 6y agoBetween the mice and this, I’m starting to think Australia just doesn’t want visitors anymore.
- airhead969 6y agoThat's it. Ssssh. If it's any consolation, my grandfather once stopped the car in the middle of a tarantula migration in Texas. My grandmother, who had bad eyesight, opened the rear passenger door and leaned over practically to the ground for a closer look. Also, power outages, tornadoes, hurricanes, FF extraction groundwater contamination, and everyone has guns. Would you like us to share?
- viraptor 6y agoDon't forget a month of orange sky as VIC/NSW bushland was on fire a month before the virus hit.
- Isinlor 6y agoHow do the spiders know about the flood? It's probably very hard to see from their level. Do they detect vibrations or humidity?
- gambiting 6y agoThey don't need to, spiders float on water. And as soon as they do they start seeking solid land, so obviously from the point of view of the spider it has no idea if it's a flood or if landed in a pond. It will just keep going in one direction until it finds land.
- dmje 6y agoI want to feel sorry for them and really I do, but seeing past the total shudder-worthy response I have to spiders (particularly large groups of them) is really hard...
- markstos 6y agoOdd to describe a survival instinct as "crazy". Humans continuing on a path towards climate catastrophe when we know better, that's crazy.
- airhead969 6y agoDemocracy, populism, and individual self-interest can't lead or solve existential global threats. The only way is to eliminate and control the major sources, i.e., ICEs, FF extraction, meat ag, and unconfined clinker/concrete manufacturing, and get to massive bio-CCS such as by exploiting phytoplankton and/or kelp. Planting trees does exactly jack naught.
- Ar-Curunir 6y ago> Democracy, populism, and individual self-interest Let's totally skip the major contributor, capitalism.
- vagrantJin 6y agoMeat is older than democracy/politica. I'll have none of that.
- vijayr02 6y ago> When floods did kill off mice, it usually happened quickly. “Farmers talk about the mice disappearing virtually overnight,” the research officer said. “They get to such high numbers they become quite stressed … they start to run out of food, which facilitates the spread of disease, they start eating the sick ones, they turn on the babies, and then it’s all over. It’s quite a grizzly story.” The lasting question of our time: how do we humans ensure we don't end up like the mice... I'm reminded of Yuval Harari's quote that civilization is 3 meals away from barbarism.
- SllX 6y agoAre we in danger of becoming like mice right now?
- bamboozled 6y agoI think the point is, we might end up having to resort eating each other as food production collapses due to climate change.
- SllX 6y agoDoubtful, hence my request for clarification.
- i_haz_rabies 6y agoDoubtful? Famine due to unusual climate circumstances is not unusual, and we are entering a new era of historically "unusual" climate circumstances (not to mention the many other faucets of human-caused environmental collapse). Far from doubtful.
- airhead969 6y agoGreenhouses, climate-controlled vertical farming, and desalination. Easily doable.
- 6y ago
- daxfohl 6y agoSo last year California followed Australia with the wildfires. This year should we be preparing for this?
- austincheney 6y agoSo whats going on that first photo (after the video)? I see a bunch of spiders and a much larger cricket. Either those spiders are micro tiny or that cricket is some kind of super giant beast of an insect.
- prawn 6y agoThe cricket is probably about 3-5cm long. That type of spider is very, very common in Australian gardens and varies a lot in size (presumably as they grow, and not as sub-species). The larger ones would be about the same size as the cricket. The ones in the photo are likely younger. If you go out with a headlamp at night, you will see dozens of these spiders with their eyes shining back at you. When gardening, I encounter them constantly (almost every minute when digging over soil) but they tend to run away or stay clear and are never concerning.