It’s Raining Spiders in Brazil: Is That the Worst Thing Ever?

Pardon the hyperbole, but this is the worst thing ever: Spiders are literally raining from the sky in Brazil. And I mean literally literally, because while the spiders are NOT aqueous vapor in the atmosphere falling to earth in drops, they are falling from the sky, which is the literal definition of ‘to rain’, as a verb, therefore it is literally raining spiders in Brazil. And that’s not cool, nature.

A video posted by 20-year-old Brazillian graphic designer Erick Reis, shows what appears to be 100s of spiders crawling through skywebs (wait, is this SkyNet from Terminator? I knew this was the year!) all around him, and I reportedly watched the video and felt itchy all over because I couldn’t not imagine myself walking around in that.

There must be some explanation, because some kind of spider-loving prankster god going, “LOL Brazil, check this out” is unlikely. A local biologist identified the spider as Anelosimus eximius — a “social spider” species known for its massive colonies and “sheet webs”. The same biologist called this behavior “normal,” which I hope is wrong because if this is “normal” on this plane of existence, then I’m moving to another one, maybe Narnia or Flatland – either seems safer.

I’m not even particularly scared of spiders, the little guys don’t bug me (no pun intended, especially because spiders aren’t even bugs), but spiders raining from the sky like this is kinda horrifying. There are a lot of things that are normally mild annoyances that would create awful situations if they fell from the sky: rush hour traffic, splinters, people who use too many emojis in text messages, uncomfortable chairs, coffee that’s too hot and so on.

Look, if it’s gonna rain something that it’s not supposed to rain, can’t it be something cool? Pie, maybe? Nah, that’d get all mushy when it hit the ground… Money? No, if it rained money, that would kinda screw up the economy and all… Books? I like books. But I wouldn’t want to get hit in the head by one falling from the sky…. Hmm. I guess we’ll just have to settle with that crazy, miraculous, thirst-quenching and necessary-for-life stuff that’s been falling from the sky for the past few millennia. Boring.

Image via Shutterstock