MIDLAND, Texas —
According to museum scientist and naturalist at the Sibley Nature Center, Michael Nickell, all the spider silk West Texans have seen the past couple of days is indeed coming from spiders, just not adult ones.
“It does correspond with the movement of spiders in the environment, primarily the young spiders, little spiderlings, I guess you can call them; that whenever they want to move to someplace else, so just let loose a little strand of silk that long enough to be able to be caught by a gust of wind, and then it can be carried aloft pretty high and also fairly long distance, and you can either call it ballooning or kiting, as far as spiders are concerned,” said Nickell.
Nickell said while it might seem like a waste at first to just leave all these random strands lying about, however, other animals in the ecosystem can actually benefit from them sometimes, like birds.
“Well, I can tell you that things like hummingbird nests are largely composed of spider web silk and so yeah that would be one use for it," Nickell said. "I'm sure there's other uses, but that's the one that comes to my mind most often."
It’s just another one of the fascinating examples of how animals adapt to their environment.
“There's nothing to be alarmed about. It's something that's very, very common," Nickell said. "So, it's amazing that certain animals have found a way to move about in the environment into great distances, you know. Even though it is a bit haphazard."