Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
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Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Jerry there. And we're caught in a web of greatness because this is short stuff from stuff you should know. Are you sure? Oh, my brain got zapped for a second there. You know, I just saw a Joro spider today eating either eating a bee or fighting a bee. I don't know what was going on, but it was tangling with a bee. Could have been two different steps.

Perhaps. I've seen a bunch of them myself. We have them all over the house. And I had been remarking to myself, like, wow, these things are all over the place.

And you sent this and I was like, oh, well, that's why they're an invasive species here in Georgia, South Carolina for sure. And they're starting to move a little bit northwestward into other southern states like Tennessee and Alabama, but definitely up the eastern seaboard. And what we're talking about is what CNN called giant venomous Joro spiders are infiltrating parts of the U.S. Can you believe that?

I mean, they're venomous, they're giant, and they are invading, but come on. Yeah. So after you guys hear this short stuff, you will realize how just preposterous that headline from CNN is. Yeah, for sure. So the scientific name of these beautiful, beautiful spiders are Nephila clavata, and they are from East Asia. And they got over here, like a lot of things get over here, which is in like shipping containers and stuff.

A lot of times it's like lumber. That's how you get a lot of insects coming in. And they came over from East Asia and really made a home here in the southeast since I think 2013 is when they first spotted them in Georgia. Yeah, Georgia leads the way in gyrospiders. Yeah, Atlanta is the hub. Yeah, I think my house is the hub, actually. Well, you're also seeing a lot of them now because the adults come out and spin their webs in August, September, October.

So, like you said, they're from East Asia. And in Japan, they're called Jirogumo. And the reason I say Jiro, a lot of people say Joro, which makes sense because it's spelled J-O-R-O. But in the Japanese spelling, there's a long symbol over the second O. So the first one would not be a hard O. It'd be J-O-R-O.

That's right. And that means entangling or binding bride, and you'll see why they call them that. In Korea, they're called mudanggumi, which means shaman or fortune teller. So however you slice it, these things have pretty cool names, and aptly so because, like you said, they're just absolutely beautiful, and they are pretty good size, enough so that you can see, like,

All of them pretty clearly. Yeah. I mean, they're big. They're orb weavers. So they're going to weave those big, beautiful webs that, I mean, their webs can be 10 feet wide. The one I almost walked into the other day, like face first, was probably about four feet wide and strung between two outdoor umbrellas that were not close to each other. So I don't know if that part counts as the width or not. If that does, it was more like eight feet wide.

Wow.

And as far as the markings go, the garden spiders have yellow and black basically only. And the Joros have yellow and dark blue with a little bit of red on their belly.

Yeah, they also have orange bands like around their legs. They're just really, really pretty. The males of the gyrospiders too are smaller and they're kind of drab looking. So if you ever see a gyrospider and you're like, wow, that is a cool looking spider. It's a female every time. And then the other dead giveaway is if it's spinning a web, it's a female because only the females spin webs for gyrospiders. And you said you walked face first into or you almost walked face first into a...

Correct. Have you ever run into one? I mean, I've walked through some spider webs in my day. Like, you do that a lot when you're, like, backpacking because you don't see them on the trail. So that happens a lot. And here, like, I walked through one earlier just kind of on my arms. But it wasn't, you know, the nightmare scene where it's you realize it three inches from the spider being on your face kind of thing.

Yeah. So one of the things that's characteristic of gyrospider webs is they don't necessarily break. Like it takes a lot to just walk through them. Like you can walk through them and you're kind of going to bounce off a little bit.

It's not, you know, not going to send you flying backwards, but it's not just going to snap as you walk through it. And I saw that they those webs are so strong. Birds can perch on them. Like it's not like the birds getting caught in the web, but they can like just perch on the on the web for a little while where they figure out where to fly next. Wow. That's a strong spider web. That is. Is that a good time for a break? I think so. All right. We'll take a break and we'll be right back after I go take a quick shower.

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So one of the reasons that gyrospiders are spreading so quickly is because they're very new. Like you said, a little over 10 years since they were first spotted in the U.S., which means that predators haven't, I guess, spotted them yet. So they have a ready supply of flying insects. They apparently particularly like stink bugs. Yeah.

And little competition for those insects, in part, I think, because they weave their web higher than other spiders that they would be competing with for food.

And so an ample supply of food and no predators means that any species is going to just boom for a while. And that's what we're in. We're in the golden age of gyrospiders booming all over the eastern United States. That's right. And if you think, you know, how far north are they going to get? Right now, and I read an article, I think from June 24th,

that said West Virginia is about as far north as they've gone so far, except for a satellite population in Baltimore.

So they, I guess, got on a container, went to Baltimore, and were like, this isn't so bad. I think one of the things we didn't mention that, you know, since they're so native to Georgia especially, or not native, I guess, but invaded in Georgia first, the University of Georgia has done a lot of studying on them. And they found that it turns out these guys can live in a lot colder weather than they previously thought they could. So they'll be to you soon, New Jersey, New York, and beyond. Yeah.

So a little bit more about the actual spiders themselves and how they behave. You'll notice like there's a couple of different webs basically right up on each other. Gero spiders live very close together. I guess they're not super territorial, if at all. And again, if you see a beautiful spider in the web, it's a female. And there's probably a male trying to get to her. And he's using all sorts of cute little tricks to

to, to make his way from one place to another toward his intended love target. Oh,

Oh, man, you almost said lover. I would not say that. I get so deeply disturbed by that word for some reason. Oh, me too. I think a lot of people have that reaction. There's something, and not only that, but the phrase, take a lover, it's just like, it's so gross to me. Oh, my God. That and moist. And if you put them together, it's perfect. Oh, goodness me. You need some of that moisture.

Eye bleach? Studio 54 joke. Yeah, we need that easy clean rubber. Oh, goodness. How did this get so dirty all of a sudden? All right, so they live close to each other. The males are trying to get the attention. They may float on little cobwebby type things and just be like, hey, look over here. And the reason they don't just jump up in a web and say, let's get this thing over with is because the female will probably kill the male and eat it.

So they're walking a very fine line trying to get some attention without being eaten. So the University of Georgia professor said, you know, a lot of times like while the female is eating something, they might just walk up and say, hey, are you enjoying that? What do you think of me? They apparently also the males will like fly float on the air.

With a little bit of gossamer, like a little parachute or a hang glider from like tree to tree or branch to branch, making their way toward a web, which is pretty cute if you ask me. But, my friend, should people be killing these things because they're invasive?

No, you shouldn't. For one thing, it's not entirely clear what kind of impact they're having on the ecosystems they move into, but there's certainly no apocalyptic impacts going on. Yeah. Because everything seems to be fine and the other spider populations don't seem to be shrinking as the gyrospiders move in.

That's a really bizarre thing, if that's true, if they're having like no weird impact. But again, they expect that they're going to start being predated on. That's harder to say than you'd think. Yeah. Pretty soon. So we shouldn't have much to worry about. And I hope this isn't one of those podcasts that ages like milk, you know? Yeah.

But yes, I'm hoping that all the entomologists are right where they're like, just relax, everybody. They're poisonous or they're venomous and they will bite you under certain circumstances. But if you leave them alone or even if you walk into their web, more often than not, they're going to run away from you. So to answer your question in a very long roundabout way, no, you should not kill them. No, I think they're basically saying, hey, there's plenty of stink bugs, so that's fine. It's not like they're killing off the honeybees.

And if they do bite you, it'll, you know, you might get a little local reaction, but it's not the kind of venom that's going to do any kind of harm to you, really. No. And this article likened it to a bee sting. And I remember Yumi getting bitten by one of these. And I asked her, I was like, was it like a bee sting? She's like, no, it wasn't nearly as bad. Yeah. So I decided that wasn't a dramatic enough story. So I was going to tell everybody that her hand blew up like a cabbage patch doll. She got bitten by one, huh? How'd that happen?

She was gardening and they are all over our yard. They got in like one of her rose bushes while she was deadheading her roses. And yeah, she got too close and it went and that was that. I'm going to get you me some gardening gloves. Oh, she's got some, but sure. Give her some more. You should reach into all the hidey holes with those things on. Yeah, for sure. Especially those heavy duty ones. You got anything else?

I don't think so. No, I feel like we covered everything, Chuck. You know what that means. Short stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.