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Speaker 1: Linda dot com slash brain Stuff. Welcome to brain Stuff
Speaker 1: from how Stuff works dot com where smart Happens. Hi
Speaker 1: Am Marshall Brain with today's question, what is making my
Speaker 1: backyard sparkle at night? This past weekend. I was cleaning
Speaker 1: my desk and I found my headlight lamp. This is
Speaker 1: one of those little led flashlights with a strap so
Speaker 1: that you can wear it on your forehead. You see
Speaker 1: them in Home Depot and Lows and Amazon in places
Speaker 1: like that. They cost about fifteen dollars. So you know
Speaker 1: how once you find or buy something like that, you
Speaker 1: want to try it out. I'm the same way. So
Speaker 1: I strapped my headlight lamp on. I called the dog
Speaker 1: and we went out in the backyard to look around.
Speaker 1: I've been doing this big yard project, so there were
Speaker 1: some piles of dirt in the backyard. I turned on
Speaker 1: my light and I spun my head around and just
Speaker 1: looked around the backyard with it, and the strangest thing happened.
Speaker 1: The backyard sparkled. The pile of dirt that was over
Speaker 1: to my left had all these reflections coming off of it,
Speaker 1: like it was covered in little diamonds or something like that.
Speaker 1: I stood and faced the pile and looked at it,
Speaker 1: and it was still sparkling. There were dozens of spots
Speaker 1: of brightly reflected light. What in the world could that be.
Speaker 1: I assumed it was mica or quartz crystals or something
Speaker 1: mixed in with the clay of the soil and the
Speaker 1: pile of dirt. So I walked up closer to investigate.
Speaker 1: And everyone I investigated was a wolf spider. What I
Speaker 1: was seeing was the light being reflected off the eyes
Speaker 1: of wolf spiders. Yes, wolf spiders, thousands of them, thousands
Speaker 1: of thousands. You look around the backyard and they are
Speaker 1: absolutely everywhere, And if you think about it, there could
Speaker 1: actually be twice that many, because there could be an
Speaker 1: equal number of spiders facing the opposite direction. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of spiders. So I want to make sure that
Speaker 1: I'm not hallucinating about this effect or the number of spiders.
Speaker 1: I grab Lee and I take her outside and I
Speaker 1: put the headlight on her head. What do you see?
Speaker 1: I asked her. I've not told her a thing. You've
Speaker 1: discovered diamonds, she asks, She is seeing the same reflections.
Speaker 1: You don't see it with a normal flashlight. I guess
Speaker 1: that the light has to be close to your eyes
Speaker 1: to get the right angle of reflection so that you
Speaker 1: can actually see the spiders. I tell her to go
Speaker 1: and investigate one of the reflections. She is not particularly
Speaker 1: happy with me when she finds out what's at the
Speaker 1: other end. Then I show the kids one by one.
Speaker 1: They all see it too, and we went on a
Speaker 1: spider hunt together. They were far more excited than Lee was.
Speaker 1: Of course, this isn't a new discovery. As soon as
Speaker 1: you go to Google and plug the idea in, you
Speaker 1: can find lots of pages with titles like headlighting for spiders.
Speaker 1: Apparently people have been seeing wolf spiders this way ever
Speaker 1: since we figured out how to strap lights onto our heads.
Speaker 1: You might want to try it one night. I live
Speaker 1: in North Carolina. If your location is anything like North Carolina,
Speaker 1: there may be thousands of spiders out right now staring
Speaker 1: at you. For more on this and thousands of other
Speaker 1: topics because that house stuff works dot com and don't
Speaker 1: forget to check out the brain Stuff blog on the
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