Chances are if you’ve been outside in the last few days, you’ve had to wipe a spider web or two off your face. You may have even seen spider webs flying through the air.
Chris Barnhart is a biology professor at Missouri State University. He says fall is when baby spiders or “spiderlings” are doing what nature intended for them to do.
"This is the time of the year when some spiders disperse. They've laid eggs, and the eggs have hatched, and the small spiders have to fly away from home and find a place to set up housekeeping next year," Barnhart said.
The spider dispersal is referred to as ballooning. Spiderlings spin a web and let the wind take them where it will.
"The little spiders climb up to a high point, which for them might only be, you know, a few inches high, but it might be the top of the tree and then they release a plume of silk and any little breeze will carry them away, and they might only drift a few inches, but they might drift for hundreds of miles," Barnhart said.
The reason they do this, according to Barnhart, is to exploit available habitat. Even humans do this, he said, when they move away from home.
While many times, it’s spiderlings that disperse via ballooning, adult spiders with small bodies use the method, too. And it’s not without risk, Barnhart points out. He said they can land almost anywhere from on top of a building to in your hair, places that aren’t conducive to survival.