February 18, 2013 The Northeast may be prone to blizzards this
time of year, but in Brazil it’s raining spiders. In a video
that’s covered the Internet like an immense web, a local
photographer captures images of thousands of spiders shimmying
up and down silk threads attached to telephone pole wires. The
footage gives the distinct impression of a shower–or perhaps
light snow–of spiders sprinkling down on the shocked residents
below. Erick Reis, a 20-year-old web designer in Santo Antonio
da Platina, a town about 250 miles west of Sao Paulo, captured
the striking video that has since accumulated more than 2
million YouTube views over the course of the week. “I was
shooting an engagement party for some friends of mine and I saw
the spiders when I was leaving, now in the late afternoon,” he
explained to TV450000, which posted the video. “I’ve never seen
anything like it before.” According to biologist Marta Fischer
of the Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, however, the
phenomenon is not so strange. ”This