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00:00 I cannot believe my team is making me do another spider segment.
00:04 All right, you follow me on social media, you watch the show, you know I am terrified
00:07 of insects, especially the giro spiders.
00:11 That well, they're now spreading, making their way up the East Coast.
00:15 I hope they're skipping over the DC area.
00:18 These things are huge.
00:19 They have a leg span of up to four inches.
00:22 And one is apparently here right now, along with Andy Davis, ecologist at the University
00:27 of Georgia's Odom School of Ecology.
00:30 Andy, it's nice to see you.
00:33 The cicadas this year were going to be the worst thing we have to deal with.
00:36 But now I, I understand your spider friends are back.
00:41 Yes, thanks.
00:42 Thanks for having me back.
00:44 You know, it's weird how these giro spiders seem to get in the news all the time.
00:48 They're they're a bit of a media sensation, aren't they?
00:51 Well, tell us if you actually have one with you or that my staff just teasing me about
00:56 that.
00:57 I do.
00:58 Yes.
00:59 You know, but first you need to know that at this stage of their life, they are very,
01:03 very small.
01:04 And so think of a grain of rice with some legs.
01:08 And so I have one right here in this little jar and it's so small you can barely see it.
01:15 But I also have a container here and I can set it up on my microscope right behind me
01:23 so you can see it.
01:24 There it is.
01:25 And so you can see that it's it looks like a little tiny spider right now.
01:31 It's very small size of a grain of rice.
01:35 At the end of the summer, they'll be sort of spider size.
01:38 That's when everybody starts to see these for real.
01:41 And do they fall off trees or is that just a urban legend?
01:44 I mean, do they jump off trees?
01:46 Do they jump off bushes?
01:48 Where are they jumping?
01:49 Not really.
01:50 No, they're very sedentary, just like any other spider.
01:53 They'll set up a web and they'll be in that web for three or four months and you can walk
01:58 by them and they won't bother you if you don't bother them.
02:01 Now, if you walk through the web, you know, you'll get a face full of web and then, you
02:06 know, then there'll be some yelling.
02:07 Wait, wait, wait.
02:10 But when they land on you, which I saw every time I walk in the woods with my dogs and
02:13 I do that a lot, I seem to walk through these webs.
02:17 I don't know if anyone ever walked through this.
02:20 That seems to always happen to me.
02:21 And I scream, of course, I'm trying to throw the web off.
02:24 But if the Joro spider ends up on your person, will it bite you or will it just crawl on
02:32 you?
02:33 Oh, my God, I would die.
02:34 Yeah, it might.
02:36 And so you would have to really tussle with it a lot for it to bite you, because really
02:42 they're quite shy as a spider.
02:44 And I've actually tested that in my lab.
02:48 And what I've heard, their bite is kind of like a bee sting.
02:52 And so it's not going to kill you.
02:54 You know, you won't like it.
02:56 But most of the time, if you just leave them alone, they'll be fine.
03:00 Andy, you are reassuring, though.
03:01 You were so nice to come on.
03:03 Thank you so much.
03:04 Great to see you.
03:05 Great to see you.