The giant Joro spider was spotted in Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood this week, and it has some residents understandably on edge.
It’s so large, it might be mistaken for a Halloween decoration – but the web it left behind here on Beacon Hill is all too real.
And perhaps the only thing creepier than seeing the spider itself is not seeing it and not knowing where it is.Andy Davis, a spider expert at the University of Georgia, said theis an invasive species that’s native to East Asia, and it arrived here in the U.S. in 2013, but this is the northern most sighting of it to date.
It’s known as a “flying spider” that parachutes into the air by releasing silk threads and catching them in the wind. One other fun fact, according to Davis, is that this is a female spider that is essentially very pregnant, with an egg sack containing about 500 hundred eggs that it will deposit somewhere around here before it dies off this fall.
“It looks scary, if you’re an arachnophobe, this is the stuff of your nightmares, but ironically, it’s incredibly shy," Davis said."It's not really harmful to people or pets. They’re not going to jump off the web and attack you, as much as people might think. They do have venom, but it’s no more potent than any other spider in your backyard.”
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