You folks in Australia…question.

[Pappy]

These are a few pictures I copied on the internet. It’s titled spider season in Australia. It this for real?

 

[Knight]

I think it's safe to say the places pictured where people with Arachnephobia would surely avoid picnicking.

 

[hollydolly]

I've seen these pics before, it'll be interesting to hear more from the folks down under....

 

[Chet]

Is it a scene from a horror movie?

 

[Pinky]

Though I hadn't seen anything that extreme when I lived there, I did have to sweep away spider webs from our shrubs every day in the summer months. If I'd left them, they may have ended up like those images.

 

[MarciKS]

<------------not a bug person

 

[MarciKS]

i stepped on a 3 in long crunchy wood roach in oklahoma. that nearly made me flip my lid. that many bugs would be too much. *shudders*

 

[Dana]

I've never seen anything like that Pappy...however I do know one park was covered in spider webs a few years ago, but I have not read of anything since.

 

[Warrigal]

Those photos are extreme examples of what happens when the ground is waterlogged. The spiders move up to higher ground and congregate. They still have to eat so the trees become festooned with webs. I think I posted a photo of an assortment of spiders on a bridge during floods at Richmond, near Sydney.

This is the photo in question. The flood water rose above the deck of the bridge and the spiders kept climbing.



Personally I have never seen this happen but there are some spiders on Norfolk Island that live permanently in colonies over and between the bushes.

 

[Chet]

I suppose if they needed eradication, it would be a good time to get them, but then their prey would flourish.

 

[Warrigal]

If we were to eradicate all of the spiders then we would soon be knee deep in insects big and small.
They have their place in the food web.

 

[AnnieA]

Oh, I wish I could send my arachnophobic ex SIL there!