Will the New York Invasion of Giant, Venomous, Flying Spiders With Eight-Inch Legs Reach New England?
They're beautifully-colored and almost artful-looking, that's for sure. However, that moment passes pretty quickly with the fact that these big spiders jump and fly, so to speak.
Eeeeeek!. I know I'd scream at near horror movie-level if I saw one. Spiders creep us out, and the bigger they are, the scarier they are. At the moment, it looks like their target is New York and New Jersey, after already invading the Southeastern states up into the Mid-Atlantic.
Is New England next?
They're called Joro spiders, and according to Time Magazine, these native East Asian arthropods have slowly been jumping and flying their way up the eastern seaboard toward the Northeast, expected to appear any time this summer.
Yes, they're venomous, and yes they're bite you if they feel threatened. However, according to the Gothamist website, their venom isn't dangerous to us humans at all. Rather, it's more about seeing a spider with a four-inch body and six-to-eight-inch legs.
The Joro spider can be beneficial to humans because it eats mosquitoes, yellowjackets, stink bugs, and even spotted lanternflies, which it catches in its golden yellow webs. Joro spiders themselves are also a food source for birds and mammals.
The Joro spider has actually been in the United States since 2010, according to TMZ, most likely arriving via shipping containers from Asia. While Georgia was the first state they appeared in, they've since made their way into Florida, the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and Maryland.
They use wind current to travel, according to the Gothamist, which is why they're referred to as flying and jumping spiders.
The spiderlings do balloon, which is like a parachuting style of producing silk that goes out into a long strand, which is then picked up by the wind. The prevailing winds are moving north at this time of year, when spiderlings are the right size to travel in the wind.
Since the wind can carry them up to 100 miles at a time, I wonder if they're make it across state lines into Massachusetts, up the New Hampshire Seacoast, or into Maine?
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