Spiders rain down on Brazilian town

Are you tired of the rain in British Columbia? Try dealing with a rain of spiders. That's what residents of the southern Brazilian town of Santo Antônio da Platina faced earlier this month.

A video catches hundreds of the eight-legged creatures spiraling through the air and dangling from power lines and telephone poles, giving the illusion that they are falling from the sky.

Turns out that the “spider rain” in the area is a normal phenomenon. According to an older report by the Epoch Times, a man in Argentina also captured pictures of a spider rain in 2007.

The Brazilian spider in this video, identified as Anelosimus eximius, is considered to be a “social spider” species known for its big colonies (thousands of arachnids!). The spider species is also known for forming massive sheet webs of two to three metres or more.

Strong tornadolike winds can pick up the webs, along with the thousands of spiders, and drop them in new locales in a spider rain, as in this case. So, despite appearances, it's really the poor spiders who are terrified.