Environment

Giant Spider Web Baffles Entomologists

by Jordan Yerman | August 30, 2007 at 07:06 am

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Most likely a team effort by several spiders rather than some giant Shelob-like monstrosity. Which is a good thing. Also, it shows that spiders, like web users, are familiar with crowdsourcing. Spiders are our friends: they eat mosquitos, which are more dangerous to people than any other bug... or nonhuman animal, for that matter. If you see one in your home, gently trap it beneath a drinking glass and slide a postcard beneath the mouth of the glass. Take your ad-hoc spider-jar to the nearest window or door and release the spider into the wild. Hug a spider today, but not the kind with the red hourglass.

Entomologists are debating the origin and rarity of a sprawling spider web that blankets several trees, shrubs and the ground along a 200-yard stretch of trail in a North Texas park.

Officials at Lake Tawakoni State Park say the massive mosquito trap is a big attraction for some visitors, while others won't go anywhere near it.

"At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland," said Donna Garde, superintendent of the park about 45 miles east of Dallas. "Now it's filled with so many mosquitoes that it's turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs."

Spider experts say the web may have been constructed by social cobweb spiders, which work together, or could be the result of a mass dispersal in which the arachnids spin webs to spread out from one another.

I guess the web must be abandoned, or otherwise it'd be quite simple to deduce the identity of the arachnid arcitect(s): one could just wait until lunchtime.

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Victoria Revay

at 08:31 on August 30th, 2007

Marc B. said that my fear of spiders could be explained by Freud. Just looking at this web makes the hairs stand-up.

Kaitlin

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 08:33 on August 30th, 2007

jordan, thanks for this. I too like spiders, always have. There is a size thing, though...I once saw this huge spider when I was in Mexico and that was enough for me. But your garden variety basement spider is totally my friend. Charlotte's Web, people! Come on.

I love the idea of spiders crowdsourcing their web, too. Makes me think of secret midnight spider gatherings in the dark.