Tourist captures horrifying spider hotel invasion: "Just Australian things"

Sydney, Australia - Poland native Marta has traveled the world, which is probably why she was able to keep her calm when she discovered a flood of creepy, crawling creatures in her hotel bathroom!

Marta has traveled the world, which is probably why she was able to keep her calm when she discovered a flood of creepy creatures in her hotel bathroom!
Marta has traveled the world, which is probably why she was able to keep her calm when she discovered a flood of creepy creatures in her hotel bathroom!  © Collage: Screenshot/Instagram/@marta.everywhere

"Just Australian things," she captioned the video, which has been terrifying many Instagram users since mid-May.

The clip shows hundreds of little spiders crawling wildly through the bathroom, mainly up the shower wall.

The viral hit has since received more than 24 million views and almost 400,000 likes.

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While some users have written in the comments section that they would never want to travel to Australia after watching this video, Marta has continued her trip unfazed.

Thankfully, the young woman's other videos show only the idyllic landscape of Australia – no creepy crawlers in sight!

But the question remains: what kind of spiders were haunting Marta's bathroom?

How did these spiders take over a hotel bathroom?

Scientists believe Marta encountered a hatching of harmless crab spiders.
Scientists believe Marta encountered a hatching of harmless crab spiders.  © Screenshot/Instagram/@marta.everywhere

Dieter Hochuli, a professor and ecologist at the University of Sydney, spoke to Yahoo! News Australia this week about the incident, suggesting that the video is probably of harmless crab spiders.

He went on to say that it was quite common to see this type of aggregation in Australia and that the mother spider may not necessarily be present when her eggs hatched.

"Lots of these spiders will lay an egg sack with 200-300 eggs in it, and they hatch quite synchronously, so it's a mass hatching," Hochuli explained.

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Patience is the order of the day in this case: "If you just wait, they'll disperse quite quickly over a day or two."

Hardly an option for arachnophobes, who are advised by the expert to avoid the animal with several hundred species – though this may prove to be quite the challenge!

Cover photo: Collage: Screenshot/Instagram/@marta.everywhere

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