A viral video appears to show spiders floating in air.
In what may be every arachnophobe's worst nightmare, footage going viral online shows hundreds of spiders as they appear to rain down from the sky. Residents in a rural area of Brazil's Minas Gerais state reported skies "raining spiders" according to the Guardian. The phenomenon, experts say, is typical in the region during hot, humid weather.
Photos and videos of the spiders in the sky have gone viral on social media. One of the most widely-shared videos was shot by Joao Pedro Martinelli Fonseca, who said that the sight left him "stunned and scared".
Since being posted on Facebook about a week ago by his mother Cecilia Juninho Fonseca, Joao's video has collected hundreds of thousands of views and a ton of shocked comments.
You can watch the video below - but please don't if you are scared of spiders.
"There were many more webs and spiders than you can see in the video. We've seen this before, always at dusk on days when it's been really hot," Joao's grandmother Jercina Martinelli told a local newspaper.
While it looks like the spiders are floating in air, Adalberto dos Santos, a biology professor specializing in arachnology, explained to the Guardian that they are actually hanging in a giant web to catch prey. The spiders, belonging to the parawixia bistriata species, weave a web so fine it is nearly impossible for the human eye to see - and that gives the illusion that they are floating in air.
Last year, pictures of a Greek town, covered in spider webs, went viral after it was taken over by thousands of tiny spiders.
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