Record-breaking floods in southeastern Australia have caused a mass animal exodus to higher ground, with spiders in particular surging onto people’s land and into their homes.
Thousands of spiders have been captured fleeing their nesting ground as heavy rain causes creeks to overflow and towns to flood across New South Wales.
A local resident photographed the massive swarm crawling along Kinchela Creek, on the New South Wales mid-north coast, on Monday.
The arachnids are seen huddling together, changing the color of the landscape to a crawling brown.
Spiders have been filmed emerging from the ground and crawling over fences, garages and homes as they try to escape floodwaters across New South Wales.
Melanie Williams filmed thousands of arachnids climbing onto her fence and garage at her Macksville home, on the mid-north coast, on Saturday.
‘As the water was rising, the letterbox was going under further and further and I could see all these little black things on there and I thought ‘oh my God, they’re spiders,’ she said.
Phenomenal rainfall figures continue to come out of #NSW, and some locations have recorded double to triple their March average.
— Bureau of Meteorology, Australia (@BOM_au) March 22, 2021
Since Thursday morning, Comboyne on the Mid North Coast has recorded 889mm, the highest so far.
? of Camden Head by Lee Hartshorne pic.twitter.com/zhUybyK3mg
Sydney University’s Professor Dieter Hochuli explained spiders would be searching for higher ground to escape the floodwaters.
‘What happens with the floods is all these animals that spend their lives cryptically on the ground can’t live there anymore,’ he said.
Communities along the Hawkesbury River are bracing for once-in-a-generation flooding that could displace thousands of residents and disrupt utilities for months.
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