It rained spiders on an Australian city. Video
Millions of small spiders flying from the sky have residents of Goulburn thinking about the end of the world.
Eyewitnesses of the spider rain that took place in the city of Goulburn in New South Wales were the first to report an unusual atmospheric phenomenon V in social networks. “The whole area and my house were covered in small black spiders, I looked up at the sun and saw a lot of strands of web going up a couple of hundred meters into the sky,” said local resident Ian Watson, who was one of the first to report the event on the town’s community page in Internet. "Anyone else seeing this... millions of spiders falling from the sky right now?" - asked Watson. And residents began to respond and demand scientific clarification.
Soon scientists were found who explained that spider rain is not a sign of an impending apocalypse, but a natural a natural phenomenon. As Martin Robinson, a naturalist from the Australian Museum, said, spiders use the method of “aeronautics” during the migration process. These animals weave webs on the tops of trees, then the wind picks them up along with the network and throws them over long distances. According to the scientist, spiders can “hover” at an altitude of up to 3 km above the ground.
“They can travel, moving for many kilometers - it is this ability that explains the fact that spiders are found on every continent. They regularly appear even in Antarctica, but then die,” Robinson said. — In this phenomenon one can also find the answer to the question why on the new islands that arose as a result volcanic activity, the first land animals are usually spiders.”
Scientists and residents note that spider flights usually occur in May and August: newly born individuals need good weather conditions and wind to migrate. “This usually happens several times a year, in clear days with light winds,” said Australian resident Keith Basterfield.
Spider rain doesn't just happen in Australia. Similar “precipitations” were recorded all over the world, and scientists managed to conduct research by studying the aeronautical technique of spiders. In particular, British specialists from research center Rothamsted conducted a series of experiments: they simulated different structures of the web and monitored how its “volatility” changed. It turned out that hard and straight threads are not suitable for aeronautics: spiders can only hang on them at the bottom of the net, and they cannot fly far. But the flexible and elastic web turns into a kind of parachute, with the help of which spiders travel long distances, scientists noted.
Rains from spiders can be useful to humans in pest control in agriculture. “Spiders are major insect hunters and could reduce the need to spray large doses of pesticides on farms,” said Andy Reynolds, a scientist at the Rothamsted centre. - But they can perform this function in the ecosystem only if they arrive in right time. Using our mathematical model, we explore how human activity, including Agriculture, influences the spread of spider populations.” The Science Times writes about the spider rain, the reactions of residents and the research of scientists.
Faktrum publishes a selection of the most strange rains what humanity remembers.
Rain from ancient coins from the 16th–17th centuries. Meshchera, Russia, 1940
That day, a fortune fell on the residents of a Russian village - about a thousand coins! To lift such weight into the air, you need a huge amount of energy, which could only be brought by a tornado. Everything would be fine, but tornadoes are generally uncharacteristic for these latitudes.
According to one version, the treasure was washed away during a thunderstorm, and strong hurricane lifted the coins into the air and threw them in the area happy village. By the way, before this, in November 1940, in English city It was raining 1p and 0.5p coins in Hanham.
Rain of frogs, Kadzha Dzhanovik village, Serbia, 2005
“Thousands of frogs fell on us along with the rain,” local resident Alexander Cyrik said at the time. All the local residents were at a loss as to where the cold-blooded animals in the sky could come from. As one of the experts suggested, the cause could be a strong whirlwind that brought frogs from a nearby lake or other body of water.
Fruit Rain, Coventry, England, 2011
“It was so unexpected and incomprehensible that everyone simply became numb,” said one of the eyewitnesses of the events. Apples are not very light fruits, so they could cause considerable damage. Fortunately, no people were injured: several cars became victims of the apple fall. Some people also found carrots and even small heads of cabbage among the apple manna from heaven.
Red (blood) rain, Kerala, India, 2001
This downpour continued for two months. Because of its terrifying blood-red hue, people saw the rain as an ominous sign. However, scientists reassured the frightened residents: the rain was colored due to spores of local lichen. By the way, in addition to red precipitation, humanity has also seen orange and even pink rain.
Spider Rain, Goulburn, Australia, 2015
The phenomenon, of course, is not a pleasant one! Spiders of this species climb trees, where they weave a web, very similar to a parachute, and the wind carries them over long distances.
Rain of earthworms, Scotland, 2011
This rain fell on the students of one of the schools, who at that time were at the stadium during a physical education lesson. David Crichton, their teacher, was forced to interrupt the lesson and evacuate the students indoors. Then the teacher, together with his students, collected worms for a long time in order to submit them for examination. A total of 120 worms were found within a radius of 92 m. Scientists assumed that the worms were brought by the wind, but that day the weather was sunny and windless. So there was no explanation.
Blackbird Rain, Arkansas, USA, 2011
Birds falling from the sky are also not uncommon. So in New Year's Eve In 2011, 4,000 blackbirds fell on residents in the United States, all of them dead. Ornithologists have studied this for a long time unusual case and came to the conclusion that the birds died not from hitting the ground, but from a collision with some object. Some scientists said that New Year's fireworks were to blame. Others insisted that due to bad weather conditions the birds lost their bearings and began crashing into trees and houses.
Fish shower, Yoro, Honduras, May-July, annually
Fish showers in Honduras are not just a common phenomenon, but a traditional one. This action takes place near the city of Yoro between May and July. It looks something like this: at 5–6 pm a black cloud hangs over the ground, then thunder rumbles, lightning flashes and fish begin to fall from the sky. By the way, this unexplained phenomenon It is even described in Honduran folklore. Even the great scientist Humboldt described the fact of fish rains. There are many such cases described in history.
Wheat Rain, Spain, 1804
The happy residents were so happy about the blessed rain that they thought: it certainly couldn’t have happened here without the influence of God. However, contrary to the theory of surprised Christians, scientists found another reason: the grain was brought strong winds from destroyed warehouses in North Africa.
Space fallout, Chita, Russia, 2015
Precipitation brings a lot of things to people: rats, fish, and spiders... However, in April of this year, the residents of Chita were presented with a unique case: a mysterious object fell from the sky and exploded, frightening eyewitnesses. Such cases are not uncommon in history: on average, about 400 such objects fall on Earth per year.
Rain with a taste of war, Lakewood, USA, 1984
In addition to living beings and space objects, sometimes unexpected objects fall to Earth. So, in 1984, in the city of Lakewood, a artillery shell weighing 12 kg. A similar incident took place on February 7, 1958 in Naples - a German shell since the Second World War.
Rain of jellyfish
Such rains occur all the time, and often in places that are hundreds of kilometers from sea coast. Jellyfish rains have been recorded in Tokyo, Beijing, Irkutsk region and the state of Texas.
Rain. Snow. Rain with snow. These are some of the things that people are used to seeing falling from the sky. But after a meteorite fell in Russia last month, people are wondering whether there were other strange things that were officially reported to have fallen from the sky. What about spiders? Frogs? Or blood? Below are ten of the strangest of these unusual weather anomalies.
10. Rain of Spiders
Imagine this: you are calmly driving a car and suddenly, out of the blue, a rain of thousands of spiders falling from the sky falls on your car. That's exactly what happened to Erick Reis, a 20-year-old web designer from Santo Antonio da Platina, a town about 400 kilometers west of Sao Paulo.
Reis, who was returning from a friend's wedding where he was a videographer, found the strength to pull out his video camera and capture the torrential rain of spiders. He then uploaded the video to YouTube and it instantly became an internet sensation.
And while raining spiders sounds like something out of a Hitchcock movie, the phenomenon is actually not that rare.
According to biologist Marta Fischer Papsky Catholic University Paranas (Pontifical Catholic University of Parana), spiders of the species Anelosimus Eximius, about the size of a pencil eraser, typically hang in trees and can build webs up to 20 meters high, which they use to catch insects. However, if it blows strong wind, the web can come off and launch spiders into the air. If this happens, then the spiders caught by the wind really seem like rain falling from the sky. Most likely, it was precisely this phenomenon that Reis captured on that fateful day.
9. Rain of frogs
According to the Bible, frogs falling from the sky are a harbinger of a terrible curse. However, according to scientists, this phenomenon has a much more logical explanation. The culprit of this phenomenon is a waterspout, which is a type of tornado that forms over a body of water (exactly where frogs usually live).
When a waterspout reaches a body of water, the frogs are sucked into the funnel and become unwitting passengers of the tornado, which carries them away from their original habitat. When the tornado stops, the frogs fall down, giving the impression that frogs are raining from the sky.
8. Meat
March 3, 1876 at small town It rained meat in Olympia Springs, Kentucky.
To be more precise, pieces of beef ranging in size from five to ten centimeters rained down on Allen Crouch's backyard. However, after two volunteers tried the meat, it turned out that it was more like lamb or venison.
Upon further research by The Royal Microscopical Society of Great Britain, it was discovered that the meat was in fact either a horse lung or the lung of a human baby (apparently the structure of a horse's lung and a baby's lung are very similar).
The most likely theory about how it all happened was that a large flock of buzzards had probably just snacked on a couple of dead horses. And when one of them regurgitated meat (which, apparently, is not so uncommon in the behavior of buzzards), all the other buzzards followed his example.
7. Dairy-free cream
In the 1920s there was a song called "You're the Cream in My Coffee." And in 1969 in the city of Chester, state South Carolina, all the residents had enough cream for coffee, as it fell from the sky.
In 1969, the Borden Company, which produced a product called Cremora, a powdered non-dairy creamer, was having problems with its exhaust ventilation. Every time the vents became clogged, clouds of non-dairy cream would spew into the air. When the clouds of cream mixed with the rain and dew, the result was a disgusting, sticky mess.
Fortunately for the city, Borden's company resolved the issue, but was still ultimately fined $4,000 for "distributing the Cremora product outside the plant boundaries."
6. Golf balls
On September 1, 1969, golfers in Punta Gorda, Florida, probably thought they had died and gone to heaven. Residents woke up that day to find hundreds of golf balls falling from the sky. Was this some kind of gift from golf heaven?
Not really. According to meteorologists, the city of Punta Gorda, which is located on the western bay of the Florida coast and which abounds a huge amount golf courses were likely affected by a passing tornado. This tornado, which captured golf balls and much of the rest of the pond's contents, dumped its contents onto the streets of an unsuspecting city.
5. Worms
On March 4, 2001, at Galashiels Academy in the UK, David Crichton's football class was on the field when, in the middle of a game, the students were bombarded by dozens of earthworms that appeared to be raining from the sky.
Some of the children, shocked by what they saw, laughed, while others ran for cover. Meanwhile, Crichton scooped up a handful of worms as evidence of the incident.
After the worm rain ended, Crichton asked his scientific colleagues to help determine the cause of the event, but none of them could find an explanation. One teacher suggested it was freaky weather phenomenon, but, as it turned out, that day the weather was sunny and clear. Crichton also noted that the students were far from any buildings, so it was impossible to assume that this was someone's cruel joke.
Although no clear explanation has been found for this case, weather was to blame for the rain of worms that struck a woman in Jennings, Louisiana in 2007.
Eleanor Beal was crossing the street on her way to work when she was suddenly pelted with several large balls of worms. Sudden rain, tornadoes and storms are not uncommon in Louisiana. And on this day, a waterspout was spotted several kilometers from the scene of the incident. It was this water tornado that brought the worms and dropped them on poor, unsuspecting Eleanor Beale.
4. Human body
The odds of this happening are about one in a billion, but that's exactly what happened to Mary Fuller in San Diego, California.
On September 25, 1978, Fuller was sitting in a parked car with her 8-month-old son when human body suddenly fell on her windshield. Where did this body come from? Fuller, of course, could not have known that Pacific Southwest Airline Flight 182 had collided moments earlier with a private Cessna jet, killing 144 people. The body that fell onto Fuller's windshield was one of the victims.
Fortunately, Fuller and her son suffered only minor abrasions. This accident is still considered one of the worst in California aviation history.
3. Cow
In 1997, a Japanese fishing trawler was rescued by a Russian in the Sea of Japan patrol boat. When the castaways were asked how their boat got into trouble, they replied, “A cow fell from the sky and drowned us.”
Naturally, the fishermen were not believed, so they were arrested and sent to jail. However, two weeks later, having overcome his shame, the employee air force Russia reported to Japanese authorities that one of his crew members actually stole a cow for meat and brought it on board his plane. However, cows are still cows, and they do not like flying or enclosed spaces. Therefore, in order to save the plane and themselves, the pilots threw the poor cow from the plane, flying from a height of 9144 meters over the Sea of Japan.
The Japanese fishermen were immediately released.
2. Money
At some point in life, each of us dreams of being showered with money. But only a few people were lucky enough to see this miracle with their own eyes.
In 1957, thousands of 1,000-franc notes fell from the sky in the small town of Bourges, France. In December 1975, hundreds of $1 bills totaling $588 fell from the sky over Chicago, Illinois.
On December 3, 1968, in front of a store in Ramsgate, England, 1-cent coins seemingly fell from the heavens. The cashier at the store claims that they were pouring out by the handful within a total of fifteen minutes. No one actually saw them fall, but everyone heard the sound they made as they clattered onto the pavement. What was even stranger was that the coins were dented, as if they had fallen from high altitude, however, there was no tall buildings and planes also did not fly over it.
On May 28, 1981, a girl from Reddish, England, claimed that she saw a 50 pence coin fall from the sky while she was walking through St. Elisabeth's churchyard. Later that day, several other children claimed the same thing happened to them while they were all gathered at a local candy store. When the store owner called the church and asked the reverend to see if the children had stolen coins from the offering basket, the reverend said all the money was there. When all the children were interviewed, they unanimously declared that money really fell from the sky.
1. Blood
In 2008, residents of the small town of La Sierra Choco, Colombia, said that blood had actually rained down on their small community. When a bacteriologist from another city tested samples of the substance, he confirmed that it was indeed blood. At this point, local priest Johnny Milton Cordoba did not miss the opportunity to declare that this was a sign from God that people should repent and take the right path.
Rain of spiders in Argentina
In 2007, on April 6th, spiders began falling from the sky in the province of Salta, Argentina. Moreover, spiders of many types, of all colors and colors. The size of such spiders was not so small - about 10 centimeters (if measured with limbs). There is even documentary evidence of this interesting case. Here is one of the photos.
Cowfall in Japan
In 1997, a Japanese fishing trawler began to sink in the Sea of Japan. The rescued fishermen unanimously claimed that a cow that fell from the sky sank the trawler. Of course, the fishermen were immediately locked up in a hospital, considering the incident a mass psychosis.
But everything turned out to be not so tragic - two weeks later the Russian Air Force command reported a sad incident - the pilots of one of the planes stole a cow, deciding to treat themselves to steaks from time to time.
But the pilots did not anticipate that the animal would go berserk when the plane took off. The cow began to destroy everything inside the plane, and they had to throw it out (it is not indicated how this happened - through the bombing hatch, or some other way).
Bloody rain in Colombia
Very often we hear about “bloody” rains, that is, red rain. It often turns out that the reason for such a strange color of raindrops is either microorganisms, or particles of red dust, or something else.
But in 2008, a real one fell in Colombia. bloody rain. It was real blood, as documented by a bacteriologist from La Sierra, Chocó. A sample was taken, the analysis of which showed that it was blood. It is clear that local priests said that this was a signal to sinners that they needed to change their lifestyle.
Rain of money
In 2007, in Germany, a truck driver saw in his rearview mirror that money, paper money, were falling from the sky. It turned out to be euros. The driver began collecting banknotes, and then for some reason called the police. When she arrived, there was no money left on the road or on the side of the road, everything had been collected.
Rain of fresh meat
This documented incident occurred in 1876 (yes, quite a long time ago) in the USA. One respectable gentleman was sitting in his study, in his own home. Suddenly he noticed that something strange was happening outside the window - pieces of fresh meat were falling.
The American collected several pieces, fried them, and invited his friends to try the unexpected gift from heaven. After eating a piece, the gentlemen reported that it was nothing more than lamb.
took place in Australia. Millions of arthropods descended on the streets and houses small town Goulburn, shrouding him in cobwebs and pretty frightening him local residents. “Angel hair” is how scientists have dubbed this phenomenon due to the similarity of wisps of snow-white cobwebs to curls.
Heavenly punishment, the end of the world or a miracle of nature? When on a small Australian city Spiders began to smoothly descend from the Goulburn sky, people at first decided that they were imagining all this. Together with hundreds of thousands of small black insects, their web lay on the ground like a blanket, and soon after the start of the unusual “rain” the fields and roads seemed to be covered dense layer snow.
Local residents perceived the phenomenon differently: some ran to hide in the basements, others armed themselves with cameras and hastened to quickly publish pictures with enthusiastic comments on social networks:
"Everything around me was covered in these little black spiders. I looked up and saw a tunnel of webs going several hundred meters into the sky. It was impossible to go out without the web sticking to you. And I also have a beard, so the spiders were climbing right up into it,” says an eyewitness.
Some local residents even suggested that a horror film was being filmed in the city, but the explanation turned out to be not so frightening. Spiders travel this way - they change their place of residence, explains biologist Ilya Kamaev.
“This is not rain, but the settlement of spiders. Small spiders release a web and fly on it: the wind picks up the web and carries it away. Why are there so many of them suddenly? The fact is that animals have a so-called “population fluctuation”, during these periods there are a lot of individuals, they become noticeable,” explains Kamaev.
Moreover, similar things happen in Russian latitudes. The phenomenon occurs in Indian summer, although in a slightly different form, says naturalist journalist Alexander Khaburgaev.
“When you go into the forest in the fall, a sticky web always “sits” on your face, because many of our spiders squeeze out a long thin web from their abdomen, the wind picks it up, and they fly away on this “parachute” to settle in new lands It’s just that it’s autumn in Australia, the spiders are in their breeding season,” says the expert. “And some vortex flows swirled them all around in one place, which is why it seemed like there were so many spiders.”
“Spider rain” is a truly impressive spectacle, but not at all dangerous for humans. The “web blanket” did not lie on the ground for long - the fabric, consisting mainly of protein, quickly disintegrated, and the insects simply crawled away in all directions.
In general unusual precipitation periodically surprise and frighten the inhabitants of our planet - take, for example, the case of frogs in the Spanish city of El Rebolledo: in 2007, a tornado that arose nearby hit a frog pond and lifted its “residents” into the air. When the wind died down, croaking amphibians fell like a cornucopia right onto the heads of the stunned Spaniards.