Joro spiders are coming to NY and NJ as soon as this summer
An invasive spider species is making its way north to the New York metropolitan region, and even though it’s harmless, its size tends to scare people. The Joro spider, which is native to East Asia, has proliferated throughout the southern United States and has even been spotted in Maryland. It’s expected to start showing up in New Jersey and New York this summer.
The spider has a body about **4 inches long** and legs that span **6 to 8 inches** — about the size of a human hand. Females are also very brightly colored; they have yellow bodies with gray or dark blue stripes, a red belly, and legs that are dark blue with yellow stripes. Males are brown.
“I’m sure it’ll bother people just because a lot of people don’t like spiders,” said Louis Sorkin, an arachnologist who is retired from the American Museum of Natural History, and now consults on arachnology and entomology. “They really don’t pose a big threat. Of course they have venom, but it’s not a dangerous venom.”
The Joro spider only bites when threatened, and its venom isn’t dangerous to humans or pets. In fact, the Joro spider can be beneficial to humans because it eats mosquitoes, yellowjackets, stink bugs, and even spotted lanternflies, which it catches in its golden yellow webs. Joro spiders themselves are also a food source for birds and mammals. It uses wind currents to travel, and one spider can travel up to **100 miles**.
“The spiderlings do balloon, which is like a parachuting style of producing silk that goes out into a long strand, which is then picked up by the wind,” Sorkin said. So if the prevailing winds are moving north at this time of year, when spiderlings are the right size to travel in the wind, then they are likely to spread from the South to the New York metropolitan region.
But the spider’s size and rapid proliferation are eliciting strong reactions. “Beware – Wicked Venomous Flying Spiders Heading To Missouri,” warned one headline. “It’s a bigger spider than we’re used to, but it has pretty colors,” Sorkin said.
Sorkin said he doesn’t expect the Joro spider to show up in such large numbers that it will cause problems.
