Or, for that matter, anyone who doesn't think 111,000 spiders joining together in one big web in a permanently dark cave on the Albanian-Greek border is pretty cool...if you'd be in that group, yeah, not for you either, I'd think.

For the rest of us, researchers found what they describe as the world's largest spiderweb in a cave. 1140 square feet of patched-together funnelwebs.

From livescience.com
Journal article link

Here's the web:


and here's one of the builders:

That is pretty cool.

A spider stopped this car from running.



Back when I was in the business, I ran into a similar situation with a Ford Explorer. He had even replaced the fuel pump, not an easy job on that vehicle. That spider didn't survive.

quote:

Originally posted by daikyu:
That is pretty cool.

But a hard pass on a cave tour, for me.

Where is Hershel Williams when you need him....

(A) no caves
(B) no spiders

quote:

...111,000 spiders joining together in one big web in a permanently dark cave...

I would have lost count at 1.

Spiders are interesting creatures. Caves, a hard NO for me!

Mr. Ballen relates a story of a cave rappeller who chose his cave poorly...

The scarier thing(s) HAS to be what those 111,000 spiders are banding together for!

Or that someone took the time to estimate the quantity!

Wow! They could bind up a lot of hobbits in all of that.

I used to go spelunking. Never saw anything like that. Need a flamethrower for that!

I'm on the same page as StarTraveler; my first thoughts were of Hobbits and spiders.

Nuke. From. Outer. Space.

Shelob?

There is a video at one of the links. And for the brave, watching that you'll see why the spiders set up shop there.

Looking away from the web into the stream of light you'll see an amazing amount of flying insects zooming around.

Now as to what those insects eat in that cave, or - if they don't live there - why hordes of them fly in, no idea. But those 110K spiders? They know what they're doing.

How could one cave have enough spider prey for that many? How would the prey not get webbed by the outermost spiders leaving the interior spiders hungry?

Large spider colonies can fluorish due to their ability to capture much larger prey than any individual could hope to harvest.

However, there is a limit to how much this socialist survival strategy can work. The colony can grow too large to be self-sustaining, and can undergo large-scale die-off.

There's probably some kind of socio-political lesson there someplace.

no issues with them,

leave them be

maybe keep an eye on them to be safe


sitting at my desk a week or so ago I saw some movement,

looked over and a wolf spider was hot footing it across the floor,
one a mission to be somewhere,

hello Boris I said, and let him be

they eat stuff I don't want around


now granted, if that may of Boris' kin and friends were in the shop, I may have an issue