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(KRON) — Local residents in Morgan Hill, Gilroy, and Capitola sent KRON4 photographs and videos this week of mysterious objects falling on their neighborhoods.
Morgan Hill resident Gina Watson shot images of strange, white webby objects that fell “from my house all the way to work,” she said.
John E. Banks, an environmental sciences professor at California State University Monterey Bay, said the objects are likely silky webs created by spiders that are ballooning. “No one has definitively figured out what they are, but they appear to be spider silk,” Banks told KRON4.
Ballooning is a skill several spiders species use to travel from one habitat to another. A spider will weave its own parachute, or “balloon,” and drift through the sky with help from wind, Banks explained. The spider is carried by the wind with hopes of reaching a location that offers plentiful food.
Ballooning helps spider populations from dying out when there is not enough food in a certain location. “Evolutionarily, it is a very smart strategy for spiders that live in an unstable environment, like farmland,” he said.
Banks said there are between 45,000 – 50,000 species of spiders on the planet, and they play an important role in keeping an ecological balance.
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