Invasion of the Spiders - Creation Moments

Genesis 1:25

“And God made … every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”

I thought I would entitle this Creation Moment “Invasion of the Spiders” just to get arachnophobes worked up! Don’t worry – I am one of those arachnophobes! I am really not keen on the eight-legged monsters, and the thought of them dropping from the sky in large numbers fills me with horror. But that is exactly what can sometimes happen.

Ballooning, as it is called, is quite common among spiders – as well as mites and some non-flying insects. The spider spins a single gossamer thread, and this is caught by air currents. In fact, as the thread is so small and light, it can even by caught up by electric fields. The spider has no control over where it is going to fly, though the effect is thought to have been responsible for spiders colonizing empty areas, such as the area around Mount St. Helens, after the devastating 1980 eruption, or the volcanic island of Surtsey, off Iceland.

Sometimes sailors have reported seeing large swarms of ballooning spiders hundreds of miles from land. Indeed, one such event was recorded by Charles Darwin, who wrote about it in his Journal of Researches from the Beagle; “While watching some that were suspended by a single thread, I several times observed that the slightest breath of air bore them away out of sight, in a horizontal line.”

God has designed some intriguing behavior among His creatures, and this should just cause us to pause and praise Him.

Prayer: Even the smallest creatures are known to You, Lord. Thank You that You care so much more for us. Amen.

Author: Paul Taylor

Ref: < https://creation.com/charged-up-spiders >, accessed 3/30/2019. Image: Ballooning spiders in San Francisco, CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported.