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Spider Web Covers Field

Posted by michael on from the arachnophobia dept.

doconnor writes "A huge spider web covering a clover field was found by biology professor Brian Thair. It was made by millions of spiders and was thick enough to hold coins. It wasn't sticky for catching insects. It's not known why the spiders did it. CBC News has an article and an interview in RealAudio."

78 comments

  1. The spiders were probably.. by Kaeru+the+Frog · · Score: 5, Funny

    ..tired of people throwing coins at them.

    1. Re:The spiders were probably.. by Bob+Vila's+Hammer · · Score: 1

      Ha, the worlds first Spiderbank.

      --


      --"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
    2. Re:The spiders were probably.. by Wolfrider · · Score: 1

      --Doing it for Art's sake, and Because It Could Be Done. Kinda like climbing Mt. Everest. :b

      --
      .
      == WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
    3. Re:The spiders were probably.. by ModernGeek · · Score: 0

      Have they tried throwing a person in it to see if the spiders will swarm/attack that person?

      --
      Sig: I stole this sig.
    4. Re:The spiders were probably.. by brandona788 · · Score: 1

      They heard of the possible meteors hitting the earth and decided to make a pad for us. How thoughtful!

  2. Check the World Record by immanis · · Score: 5, Informative
    from Guinnes Book Of World Records :

    Largest Outdoor Spiders' Web In October, 1998, a cobweb that covered the entire 4.54-ha (11.2-acre) playing field at Kineton High School, Warwick, England, was discovered by Ken Thompson - the school's caretaker. It had been created by thousands of black money spiders.

    I seem to remember another huge one that was ongoing, but I don;t remember where I saw it...

    --

    best web host ever

    1. Re:Check the World Record by GigsVT · · Score: 3, Funny

      discovered by Ken Thompson

      What they don't tell you is that this was the inspiration for the network centric nature of UNIX. Thompson, being a visionary, knew that there eventually would be a world wide web of UNIX systems.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    2. Re:Check the World Record by Sprunkys · · Score: 2, Funny

      Can anyone please explain how you miss something like that growing?

      Do these spiders do this in one night, or did the caretaker (and everyone else using the playing field) suddenly realize that grass really shouldn't be white?

      --
      "We live in our minds, and existance is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality" Ayn Rand
    3. Re:Check the World Record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A web "thick enough to hold coins," possibly created by "thousands of black money spiders."

      Coincidence? I think not!

    4. Re:Check the World Record by lommer · · Score: 2

      Well, that should make this a new record then, and by an enormous margin as they supposedly discovered "a silky, white web stretching 60 hectares across a field."*

      *emphasis added

    5. Re:Check the World Record by danratherfan · · Score: 1

      So that's why they did it! They were going for the world record!

      I didn't know spiders were so competitive. ;)

    6. Re:Check the World Record by canadian_right · · Score: 2

      I'm not totally sure about spiders that do the fluffly trampoline style webs, but orb weavers do a new web each day, and it takes them 2 to 3 hours to weave it. Most likely the giant web did in fact fact appear overnight.

      --
      Anarchists never rule
  3. Just a misunderstanding by L.+VeGas · · Score: 5, Funny

    They heard about the World Wide Web and assumed it was their responsibility.

    bwaaaa haaa haaa

    --
    Best Windows Freeware
  4. What the spiders were thingking: by Unknown+Poltroon · · Score: 3, Funny

    1. Spin big web.
    2: ??????????
    3: Big Profits!!!

    --
    All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
    1. Re:What the spiders were thingking: by falzer · · Score: 5, Funny

      Finally step two has been found:
      2: Get people to put coins on the web.

  5. Eight legged freaks? by macdaddy357 · · Score: 2

    A giant web that might be strong enough to catch people! That would be really scary if the story included a picture.

    --
    How ya like dat?
    1. Re:Eight legged freaks? by wkitchen · · Score: 3, Funny
      A giant web that might be strong enough to catch people! That would be really scary if the story included a picture.
      I've had spiders build webs accross the frame of my front door. I can just imagine the spider thinking, "Oh man, if I can catch just one of those things, I'll never go hungry again!"
    2. Re:Eight legged freaks? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0



      http://www.cuyamaca.net/tpagaard/PagaardSite/Hom e/ HomeContent.htm

    3. Re:Eight legged freaks? by rherbert · · Score: 1

      You can tell you're a geek... If you went outside more often, perhaps spider webs wouldn't accumulate across your front door. :)

  6. This is by CableModemSniper · · Score: 1, Funny

    one of those stories that just screams for some witty comments. However I doubt we'll see any. The best (or worst) will probably be jerks making meta-comments try to sound clever.

    --
    Why not fork?
  7. Ssshhh... by jki · · Score: 5, Funny
    There were "in the order of tens of millions of spiders running frantically back and forth," but they weren't interacting with each other. Since the spiders didn't seem to care if an occasional insect stumbled into their construction, Thair doesn't think it was built for trapping purposes.

    Don't tell anyone, but I think I have found a secret way to control the spiders by using gnuplot...

  8. It's obvious why the spiders did it... by psyconaut · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...they were tired of making damn crop circles trying to get our attention!!!!

    DUH! ;-)

    -psy

  9. wow by tps12 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sounds like a job for young Bilbo Baggins and his faithful Elven blade, Sting!

    --

    Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
    1. Re:wow by hplasm · · Score: 1

      Sounds like a job for a young Sting and his faithful Tantic Sex Blade..

      --
      ...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
  10. Protection... by camelrider · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...from the Leonid meteor shower, of course.

  11. Uh by nosferatu-man · · Score: 2

    Remind me to stay out of Northern British Columbia. As if the man eating grizzlies and cougars weren't enough.

    'jfb

    --
    To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
    1. Re:Uh by CyberDong · · Score: 1
      As if the man eating grizzlies and cougars weren't enough.

      I've been to the bars in Northern BC. You're more likely to find grizzlies and a man eating cougars (after last call)...

  12. Re:Scientist burns penis with hot laptop by Urox · · Score: 1

    There appear to be several naked stories on CNN: university porn videos, something about keeping your clothes on... I stopped reading CNN long ago because it annoyed me too much that a professional news website couldn't run themselves through a spell checker.

    --
    "Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
  13. Picture? by vandel405 · · Score: 0

    Anyone find another article about this with a picture?

  14. Re:Scientist burns penis with hot laptop by CableModemSniper · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Wow. This is not a troll or Goatse.cx link. That is amazing. I hope someone submits it.

    --
    Why not fork?
  15. Radio Telescope by heliocentric · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think they are trying to receive communications from deep space and begin their plans for place travel. This is just to compete with the humans at the Arecibo radio telescope.

    --
    Wheeeee
  16. Re:Scientist burns penis with hot laptop by redfiche · · Score: 2

    It was rejected.

    --

    Brevity is the soul of wit

    -- Polonius

  17. Oh dear god! by Syncdata · · Score: 2

    Brian Thair of the College of New Caledonia in Prince George said he saw a silky, white web stretching 60 hectares across a field.
    This is the end, my friends. Spiders have developed civilization, and their system of measurement is Hectares. Batton down the hatches!

    --
    "Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
    1. Re:Oh dear god! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NOOOOOO!

      Get back, you eight-legged, metric-system-using Freaks!

  18. Worst.Journalism.Ever by Syncdata · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Please, whatever you in the CBC online news staff do, don't tell me what species of spider it was that built this structure. Oh, and also, don't include a photo, because I'm sure noone would want to see an image of this anomoly. Do your best just to speculate about why they built the web, and make sure to include a funny joke at the end, something about aliens perhaps.

    --
    "Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
    1. Re:Worst.Journalism.Ever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As a longtime listener to cbc radio, I really must say the web site for news has always sucked ass. It's more or less the reference pages that go with the news broadcasts. Since usually it's radio, there don't take pictures (duh), and big detail has never been their strong point (many stories consist of *two lines*, I'm suprised this one was so long).

    2. Re:Worst.Journalism.Ever by lommer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's a radio show that's covering this story, so why the hell would they want pictures? The website you are looking at is the web-presence of the radio show, and isn't supposed to be anything more.

      As another poster mentioned, the reason they didn't give you the species of the spider is because it hasn't been determined yet.

      And, IMHO, the CBC is a damn good news reporting agency.

    3. Re:Worst.Journalism.Ever by Wil63 · · Score: 1

      >>It's a radio show that's covering this story, so why the hell would they want pictures? The website you are looking at is the web-presence of the radio show, and isn't supposed to be anything more. WRONG! Because it's on the Web. what's the point of putting it online in ANOTHER MEDIUM if there's no pic?

    4. Re:Worst.Journalism.Ever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about for archival purposes? I don't happen to listen to CBC radio 24h a day (and in fact, there are both CBC Radio One and CBC Radio Two out there, and it's kind of hard to listen to both at the same time, especially without two radios), so not everyone may have heard the original broadcast. However, thanks to the amazing technology of the internet, I can now read the story online, even hours after it was aired!

      Seriously, though. They're a radio station, and they're putting their reports on the web for free. What have you got to complain about? If you want pictures, go buy a newspaper.

    5. Re:Worst.Journalism.Ever by FunkMonkey#9 · · Score: 1
      WRONG! Because it's on the Web. what's the point of putting it online in ANOTHER MEDIUM if there's no pic?

      Fine. I'll call Project Gutenberg and get them to purge the archives.

      --

      -- The One and Only NotMike.

    6. Re:Worst.Journalism.Ever by gwyrdd+benyw · · Score: 1

      The article included several photos. Click on "web of mystery" which appears just after the first paragraph.

      --

      I adblock all animated gifs.
      Blessed be the prime numbered slashdotters
  19. Well duh... by nathanh · · Score: 5, Funny
    It was made by millions of spiders and was thick enough to hold coins. It wasn't sticky for catching insects. It's not known why the spiders did it.

    The spiders aren't trying to catch insects anymore. They're trying to catch entymologists. Far more meat on a 40 year old scientist than a 2 month old beetle.

  20. Re:Scientist burns penis with hot laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why?

    I can't place my 1 ghz Duron laptop on my lap because of discomfort. I can't help but believe that these new 2 ghz laptops and such can actually cause burning.

    I mean, common sense tells you, if you put a hot object on your lap, burns happen. But we live in a world without common sense; a world where idiots can smoke and then sue tobacco companies, a world where some old bat can spill McDonald's coffee on herself and end up with a cool million for her idiocy.

  21. Re:Scientist burns penis with hot laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    McFacts abut the McDonalds Coffee Lawsuit

    McDonald's knew its coffee sometimes caused serious injuries - more than 700 incidents of scalding coffee burns in the past decade have been settled by the Corporation - and yet they never so much as consulted a burn expert regarding the issue.

    The woman involved in this infamous case suffered very serious injuries - third degree burns on her groin, thighs and buttocks that required skin grafts and a seven-day hospital stay.

    The woman, an 81-year old former department store clerk who had never before filed suit against anyone, said she wouldn't have brought the lawsuit against McDonald's had the Corporation not dismissed her request for compensation for medical bills.

    After careful deliberation, the jury found McDonald's was liable because the facts were overwhelmingly against the company. When it came to the punitive damages, the jury found that McDonald's had engaged in willful, reckless, malicious, or wanton conduct, and rendered a punitive damage award of 2.7 million dollars. (The equivalent of just two days of coffee sales, McDonalds Corporation generates revenues in excess of 1.3 million dollars daily from the sale of its coffee, selling 1 billion cups each year.)

    On appeal, a judge lowered the award to $480,000, a fact not widely publicized in the media.

    A report in Liability Week, September 29, 1997, indicated that Kathleen Gilliam, 73, suffered first degree burns when a cup of coffee spilled onto her lap. Reports also indicate that McDonald's consistently keeps its coffee at 185 degrees, still approximately 20 degrees hotter than at other restaurants. Third degree burns occur at this temperature in just two to seven seconds, requiring skin grafting, debridement and whirlpool treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars and result in permanent disfigurement, extreme pain and disability to the victims for many months, and in some cases, years.

    Re: smoking, I agree. But I can't stand people who use this as an example of a frivolous lawsuit.

  22. Any Pictures? by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 1, Redundant

    If someone knows any site with pictures of the field, could you please provide us with a link.

    --
    Jumpstart the tartan drive.
  23. Clusterweb? by dacarr · · Score: 2, Troll

    Perhaps they were trying to put together a beowulf cluster.

    --
    This sig no verb.
  24. Species is not yet known by shfted! · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm from Prince George. The story and pictures have been in the local papers for a couple weeks. The species of spider has not yet been identified, so how could they tell you what it is? Don't be so judgemental.

    --
    He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
    1. Re:Species is not yet known by CyberDong · · Score: 1

      Do you know if a local paper has a website with pictures (of the spider web...)?

    2. Re:Species is not yet known by shfted! · · Score: 2, Funny

      Since all the papers are lame around here (only 80,000 in the city, so they see no need for a web archive), i can't help you out.

      --
      He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
    3. Re:Species is not yet known by richie2000 · · Score: 2
      they see no need for a web archive

      *groan* If you did that one on purpose, I will hunt you down and give you karma. By force, if necessary!

      --
      Money for nothing, pix for free
  25. They probably read slashdot... by Taper · · Score: 2, Funny

    The spiders probably saw this story and decided, heck, let's catch us a plane...

  26. Had to be said... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Spider 1: I like spinning webs.
    Spider 2: Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!

  27. Reminds me of... by teqo · · Score: 1
    Phase IV

    (Yes, I know, those were ants... Anyway... .)

  28. How far to the nearest GMO experimental crop? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Enough weirdness.

  29. That's gotta be it by helix400 · · Score: 2
    It was made by millions of spiders and was thick enough to hold coins. It wasn't sticky for catching insects. It's not known why the spiders did it.

    They did it because they can.

    1. Re:That's gotta be it by hplasm · · Score: 1

      Giant Spider Conference Pavillion. To discuss forthcoming attack on Hollywood for decades of anti-spider B Movies. Guest speaker Stan Lee.

      --
      ...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
  30. asdasd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    zxfcsdf sdf asd

  31. I neard about this on NPR by azav · · Score: 1

    But it's too bad no one thought to take PICTURES.

    Wasn't anyone thinking?

    --
    - Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
    1. Re:I neard about this on NPR by corbettw · · Score: 2

      You heard it on NPR, and wonder where the pictures were.... Tell me, what color is the sky in your world?

      --
      God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
  32. Who says... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...you can't make money on the web?

  33. Sorry, my bad by Caractacus+Potts · · Score: 2, Funny


    Sorry, those were my genetically modified spiders. No need to be alarmed, it won't happen again.

  34. You see the world's largest web by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 1

    And you don't take a photo. Either you're a liar, dumb, or both.

    --
    Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
  35. Hoax! by Cyno01 · · Score: 1, Troll

    Oh c'mon, this is probably just some promo stunt for the Spider-man Sequel alternate joke They probably got annoyed with those ads for MSN 8 and decided to spin a web to catch those idiots in the butterfly suits.

    --
    "Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
  36. This just in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...the spiders are being sued by Monsanto.

  37. ...a Simpsons reference! by c.emmertfoster · · Score: 2

    Ladies and Gentlemen, we have just lost the picture.
    But what we've seen speaks for itself.
    The Corvair spacecraft has apparently been taken over, conquered if you will, by a master race of giant space ants.
    It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them.
    One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them the ants will soon be here.
    And I for one welcome our new insect overlords.
    Would like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar cave.

    --
    We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
  38. Re:Scientist burns penis with hot laptop by R.Caley · · Score: 2
    [the story] was rejected.

    Clearly /. are supressing this story while they buy in a range of caffine-enhanced burn treatment products for sale on thinkgeek.

    --
    _O_
    .|<     The named which can be named is not the true named
  39. subject: general weirdness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This reminds me of the giant, underground fungus in the northern United States (and no, I'm not talking about the X-Files episode). As I recall, it stretched for many miles. Anyone remember this or hear what happened to it?

  40. Just a thought by teamhasnoi · · Score: 2
    Perhaps it was to keep insects IN the field?

    OR something FAR MORE SINISTER!

  41. Link changes by hether · · Score: 2

    I went back to read this and now the article links to a story about the son of a drug boss being arrested. Not near as interesting as huge spider webs. :(

    --

    Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
  42. Why no pictures? by Mustang+Matt · · Score: 2

    I would have liked to have seen a picture of this.

    --
    The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
    1. Re:Why no pictures? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually there were pictures at the original website: http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2002/11/22/spiders021121
      You just have to click on "SPIDER WEB PHOTO GALLERY" to see them (with javascript turned on). Unfortunately there were no pictures of the entire field, just areas around the barbed wire fence posts.

  43. all the papers are lame around here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >>all the papers are lame around here

    Don't be so judgemental.

  44. The truth is... by nukey56 · · Score: 1

    ...that this was an escaped batch of terrorist-fighting spiders, specially bred to infest parcels of land which might be profiled as terrorist-breeding grounds. By eliminating the threat of open spaces, we can reduce terrorism!

    Modding me down only makes you a terrorist.