I never heard about it and I do not think I really wish to know first hand a whole lot about it either. It appears that between May and August the arachnid population explodes and though those 8 legged critters never really creeped me out, the link and photos do. https://www.awmagazine.org/spider-s...arachute to detach themselves from the ground
"Was going to buy an exotic spider from the pet shop, then I realised I could get one cheaper on the web." In before @John Brunner
When I first moved to South Florida as a kid, I came across one of these beauties, a wolf spider, perched in a corner of the ceiling in my bedroom. It was actually only about 2 1/2-3” across but it didn’t belong in my bedroom nor on the face of the earth so far as I was concerned. There were a few things I found out later after I grabbed a shoe and squashed it. 1. The Floridians consider them good luck to have them hanging around in their homes. 2. They do not make webs. 3. The female carries it’s young in an egg sac underneath her and attached to her spinnerettes. 4. Ya don’t squash a female spider carrying her young in an egg sac because though the mother may be squashed, the 100 or so baby spiders that were in the sac are now loose and running wherever they like, mainly, all over my bedroom.
We had a plumber who said that we had wolf spiders in our crawlspace, but I specifically looked for them down there and didn't find any kind of a spider, let alone a wolf spider. Wolf spiders have venom but it is not usually associated with serious problems in humans, except for the Australian Wolf Spider, which some say can cause necrotic wounds, although this is disputed. I mention it mostly to bring my post back on topic.
My son says he has seen huge wolf spiders under houses. He says he leaves them alone and they leave him alone.
After I posted the initial post, I’ve tried to think of any time when I’ve seen anything close to those pics. Nada. Not even all the baby wolf spiders running amok. There IS once when I lived in southern Arizona when I experienced something kind of like it though. During the monsoon season, Tarantulas come up out of their hiding places to get away from the water and wind up on the roads. Thousands of tarantulas getting run over by cars and trucks making their way to wherever. One rainy night I pulled over on the side of the road and just watched them making their way down the pavement. There were so many that I couldn’t see the lines down the middle nor sides of the street.
Why did you have to remind me @Bobby Cole. I have two pooches and I do worry about them in arachnid season. We have our own Wolf Spider. Our farmers sure need more of these critters as my state is having a mouse plague. Crops are being destroyed and just yesterday these little meeses chewed thru wire and cause a fire that razed a home. Australian Mouse Spider.
I came across this while browsing on Twitter this evening. Apparently they did tests with those spiders that build the gigantic oval webs, and gave them different drugs to study the effects on their web building abilities. It had a little video that showed them touching the spider with a q-tip and then the spider went ahead with the web spinning. The most amazing one to watch was the one who was given caffeine, you could see him literally spinning around in circles and very uncoordinated.
March of the Tarantulas is common in Kansas where we are moving. Plus I was told the turtles there do the same thing. Still creepy