Giant black and yellow spiders the size of a human hand are set to arrive in northeastern US states this summer, including New Jersey and New York.
Jorō spiders are an invasive species that originated in China, and experts say they can fly up to 100 miles by turning their webs into makeshift parasails.
Although they are venomous, scientists say Jorō spiders’ venom is weak and that their fangs aren’t strong enough to break the skin of humans or pets.
The creepy crawlers are about four inches long and have legs that span six to eight inches. The females are brightly colored and are known to cannibalize their brown-colored male mates.
Jorō spiders are believed to have made it to the US about ten years ago on shipping containers delivered to Georgia.
Jorō spiders have a body about four inches long and legs that span six to eight inches, which often takes up the majority of a human palm
Since then, the unnervingly large arachnids were spotted in Georgia in 2021, spinning their large, orb-shaped golden webs all over people’s yards.
Experts have long been predicting the massive spread of Jorō spiders across the east coast, with an ecologist at Rutgers University telling DailyMail.com in 2023 that they should be in New Jersey and New York ‘possibly even next year.’
‘Because their main methods of dispersal are to either ‘balloon’ with the wind, or hitch rides on cars,’ PhD student and ecologist José R. Ramírez-Garofalo told DailyMail.com, ‘they are generally going to spread to where the wind blows, or where humans are.’
A group of researchers from multiple states predicted that Jorō spiders will eventually make a home out of the entire continental US, Canada and even parts of Mexico.
The spider’s ability to survive in all these different areas with vastly different climates has been demonstrated via an experiment at the University of Georgia last December.
While the imposing Jorō spider is likely here to stay, according to most scientists, there have been no documented fatalities from this arachnid. They are venomous, but their poison is weak. Their fangs also can’t pierce a human’s skin
Scientists there froze more than two dozen of the roughly eight-inch-long spiders and found that 75 percent of them were unaffected.
As such, researchers told DailyMail.com they saw ‘no barrier’ to Jorō spiders’ march north.
‘The native range in Asia includes much of western China and the entire Korean peninsula, so the spiders are clearly well adapted to fairly cold climates,’ one researcher explained.
The good news for arachnophobes in the northeast is that Jorō spiders don’t want to go inside homes and much prefer staying outside and using manmade structures as the basis to form their webs, according to an October peer-reviewed study conducted by David Coyle.
The map, created by ecologists entomological researchers in New York, Tennessee, Texas and South Carolina, shows where Jorō spiders are most likely to spread
Coyle, an assistant professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation at Clemson University, suggests that people if don’t want the spiders around to just move them with a broom or stick.
Coyle added that while Jorō spiders’ direct effect on other native species such as golden silk spiders is unclear, it is clear that they are an invasive breed that requires more attention from the scientific community.
‘These are not just benign spiders coming to catch and kill bad things; these are pushing out native species and catching and killing whatever happens to get in their webs,’ Coyle said.
