Imagine walking outdoors and, suddenly, out of the sky drops a spider the size of your hand right onto your head.

Ok, it’s unlikely, but not impossible. Not with the Joro spider spreading across the eastern U.S. and almost certainly destined to make its way to southern Alabama.

They’ve already been spotted in the state. In early October, a hiker in north Alabama reported an encounter with a Joro in the Roy B. Whitaker Preserve in Paint Rock, east of Huntsville.

The Joros, native to East Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China, are thought to have arrived in the U.S. around 2013 when they were discovered in Georgia. Since then, they’ve spread across much of Georgia into Tennessee and the Carolinas, with additional sightings in Maryland and even as far west as Oklahoma, according to a study by Clemson University.

Female Joros can grow to 6-8 inches in length (legs included), while the males are considerably smaller.

Joro researcher Dr. Andy Davis at the University of Georgia told AL.com this week that while he has not heard of any Joro sightings in south Alabama, “it would not surprise me if there were one,” adding that Joros have now made their way into West Virginia.

Joros are incredibly invasive, so much so they can essentially run off any other species of spider. They will eat almost anything they catch in their webs — mosquitos, flies, stink bugs and, yes, other spiders.

“These spiders don’t seem to care what gets in their web; they’re just as likely to eat brown marmorated stink bugs as they are to eat a Monarch butterfly,” said Clemson professor David Coyle. ” To say they’re more beneficial than another spider is just simply wrong — they’re a spider — and if something gets caught in their web, it’s going to get eaten.

“And they don’t care if it’s a rare native pollinator and there are only a few of them left in the world or if it’s a brown marmorated stink bug,” he said. “It’s six of one or half-dozen of another — it’s the same thing to that spider — it’s prey.”

But are Joros dangerous to humans?

Well, they are venomous, and as noted earlier, they can travel for miles by “ballooning” — using silks to catch the wind and carry them for miles. But there’s good news — researchers say the Joros’ fangs aren’t strong enough to penetrate human skin. They also tend to be timid and won’t bite humans or larger animals unless threatened.

But they’re big and they make “enormous, multi-layered webs of gold-colored silk,” Davis said. Imagine a banana spider and its web, then increase that threefold.

But there’s more good news: You’re not likely to find a Joro in your house. They prefer the outdoors and are more likely to be found on the outside of your house and around your yard. Coyle himself found 50 Joros (yes, 50) on his property in 2020.

“I walked the edge of the woods — and they were everywhere,” Coyle said. “I have a 94-yard perimeter and found 50 Joro spiders on the perimeter. So, basically, every two yards there was a spider. This was in the morning and all the webs had dew on them, so you could easily see them and there were just dozens of them on the power lines across the road.”

Davis told AL.com Joros also appear to be adept at using means other than ballooning to travel.

“These spiders are really good at hitchhiking on cars,” he said. “I’ve even found one on my own truck while I was traveling on the highway.”

As Davis said, while there have been no reports of Joros in southern Alabama as yet, they may already be here. Sightings can be reported online at websites such as iNaturalist or the University of Georgia’s jorowatch.org.

Coyle said pesticides work in dealing with Joros at home, but are largely unnecessary, given the Joros’ benign nature.

“Pesticides work, but, also, they are probably overkill because it will kill everything else, and there is a cost involved; it’s just as easily to physically move them if they are on your house,” he said. “They seem to love structures. So, I just tell people to take a stick or broom and remove them.”