Spider Web Covers Field

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."

Comments

The spiders were probably..

[Kaeru the Frog]

..tired of people throwing coins at them.

Just a misunderstanding

[L. VeGas]

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

bwaaaa haaa haaa

What the spiders were thingking:

[Unknown Poltroon]

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

Re:What the spiders were thingking:

[falzer]

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

Ssshhh...

[jki]

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...

It's obvious why the spiders did it...

[psyconaut]

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

DUH! ;-)

-psy

wow

[tps12]

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

Radio Telescope

[heliocentric]

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.

Well duh...

[nathanh]

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.

Re:Eight legged freaks?

[wkitchen]

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!"

Re:Check the World Record

[GigsVT]

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.