Giant Spiders Are Raining Down on the East Coast

Researchers at the University of Georgia have announced that millions of Jorō spiders, which have been described as being roughly the size of a child's hand, are expected to spread out from Georgia along the East Coast as early as May. Native to Japan, the eight-legged little terrors first showed up on American shores about a decade ago, hitching rides on shipping containers like most invasive species do.

Luckily, the Jorō's fangs are too small to break human skin making them relatively harmless. However, they do have the terrifying ability to essentially fly from one place to another using their silk as a hang glider in a process called "ballooning," which does paint a terrifying mental image of drink coaster-sized arachnids raining down on unsuspecting Georgians like some sort of biblical plague. Worse still, the Jorō spider is able to tolerate cold weather which makes it harder to control the growing population and likely means that we could end up seeing them spread as far north as Washington DC, or even Delaware. (But researchers think they likely won't venture past North Carolina.)

So, not only are these gangly 4-inch long creepy crawlers are going to give you a heart attack when you inevitably stumble upon one chilling in your bathtub, but it looks like there's not much we can do to stop it. "The reality of the situation, though, is that for every spider that we might see being transported, there are likely 10 more that evade detection," co-author of the new study Benjamin Frick tells CNN.

The unfortunate reality, it seems, is that we are just going to have to learn to live with it. “If they’re literally in your way, I can see taking a web down and moving them to the side, but they’re just going to be back next year.” We're all processing the best way we know how.

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