The Atlantic

Tiny Jumping Spiders Can See The Moon

An unexpected rain of spiders led to a lovely Twitter geek-out between astronomers and arachnologists.
Source: Kaldari / Wikipedia

Last Wednesday, a spider fell onto Jamie Lomax’s laptop. Two days later, it happened again. Soon enough, several spiders were crawling across the ceiling of her office. “It was a little unnerving,” says Lomax, who’s an astronomer at the University of Washington. “I’m not scared of spiders but if someone else wants to take care of the spider in a room, I’ll gladly let them do it over me. And I don’t really want them raining down on my head.”

Lomax identified the abseiling arachnids as , and tweeted about her experiences with the hashtag #ItIsRainingSpidersNotMen. And after considering options including “,” she settled for notifying her university. They sent over an exterminator, who failed to

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