This rare footage showing hundreds of eight-legged crawlers seemingly ‘raining from the sky’ is in fact a spider mating orgy, experts have said.
The video, filmed in Sao Thome das Letras, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, on 28th December, baffled netizens before being picked up in local media on 24th January, with experts coming forward to explain the science behind the bizarre phenomenon.
The footage appears to show countless spiders raining down from the sky.
But experts explained that they were in fact on a very large web and had got together in a bizarre mating ritual orgy.
One biologist, named as biologist Kayron Passos, told local media: “It’s a spider orgy, the females have something called spermatheca, where they store the semen of different males to fertilise the eggs.
“This way, the female ensures that she will have several different offspring and increase genetic variability.”
Passos explained that even after fertilising the eggs, the females continue to collect semen for later use.
He said: “This behaviour increases resistance, making these offspring more resistant to diseases.”
And arachnologist Ana Lucia Tourinho, who has a PhD in Biological Sciences and works at the National Institute of Amazonian Research, said: “Spiders generally do not stay together, but some species exhibit this social behaviour of forming colonies. The strategy of staying together in a group increases the food supply for the offspring and juveniles.”
The expert, who has been studying spiders for 27 years, said: “The colony usually forms every year, most of them in the colony are relatives, they are usually generations of mothers and daughters together, but after they mate they will disperse.”
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Story By: Joseph Golder, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash
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