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  • 2018-11-02 (xsd:date)
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  • Does This Photograph Show a Park Covered with Spider Webs? (en)
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  • A photograph purportedly showing a park in Australia completely covered in spider webs is frequently shared online with humorous captions such as It's not snow, but rather the spider season in Australia: This image is genuine, one of several photographs taken in July 2016 by a couple of Pokémon Go players who stumbled across a field covered in spider webs while searching for a Meowth in a park in Yinnar, Victoria. Leslie Schmidt explained to BuzzFeed News that We were chasing a Meowth but didn't get it. [We] got distracted by the webs ... I guess I just loved the juxtaposition of wonder and horror. It looks so snuggly but it's what they use to trap dinner. While this scene may appear shocking to some viewers, it isn't an unprecedented occurrence. These pictures depict the remnants of an act of mass migration in which millions of spiders use their webs as a type of parachute to carry them to new areas. These mass ballooning events can leave fields covered in spider webs, as seen here. Due to their appearance, locals refer to these types of webs as angel hair: South Australian resident Keith Basterfield talked with the Goulburn Post after a similar mass ballooning event in May 2015: Wagga Wagga, Australia, was also briefly covered in webs in 2012 as spiders attempted to escape rising floodwaters: Australia isn't the only location to witness this type of arachnidian event. The center image in the bottom row of the above-displayed collage was taken in Pakistan in 2010 after the area experienced massive flooding. It's unclear if the arachnids in Pakistan ballooned into the trees, or if these webs were built after the spiders climbed the trees in order to avoid flood waters: The United States has also seen fields covered in spider webs. For example, in November 2015 residents of North Memphis, Tennessee, were shocked to see nearly a half-mile stretch of grass covered in spider webs. Todd Blackledge, a biologist and expert in spider silk at the University of Akron in Ohio, told National Geographic that: A video from the New York Times offers some additional information about spider ballooning: (en)
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