Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Giant Spider Web

Posted by Hemos on from the lloth-where-are-you? dept.

Stochastic_Elastic writes "According to an article at CBC, a biology professor in northern British Columbia has discovered a giant spider web stretching 60 acres across a field. Here is a quote: "Some people have said, 'oh yes, well it's a trampoline for aliens,'" Thair joked. "Or maybe it was an effort collectively by these spiders to try and catch a sheep.""

1 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. maybe it wasn't chemical by zogger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    --maybe it wasn't a chemical trigger. Maybe it was electromagnetic. Maybe it was thermal or gravitic. Maybe it was optical. Or all of the above.
    I've noticed here that mass insect behavior is way more temp related than anything else, we've just now passed our annual fall lady bug hatch. We get a spring hatch and a fall hatch, always after a cold snap, followed by a warm snap, poof, lady bugs during those two seasons. Cicadas in the summer are similar, it appears to take a pretty precise set of temps at night and humidity to trigger them all off. Too dry or too cool, much less evidence of them-they are quite loud at night, BTW.

    Usually mass quantities of insects in one spot indicate one of two things, over abundance of a favored food source, or, it's yee haw mating season, or hatching out season. Flying ants/termites are another,you see hardly any most of the year, then a few days early summer gazillions of them. Hmm, love bug hatches in florida is another example, none, then gee whizz.

    It might be spiders do this all the time, but this particular area just got 'a lot'. I frequtly see huge areas of the lawns here that I maintain might not have any webbing in the early morning, but just on some days there will be almost total coverage, then it stops after a few days. The deal in the article was just the over size of the phenomena, not that similar doesn't occur various insects.

    Interesting either way.

    Here's something I discoverd this summer. If you are familiar with "mud dauber" type wasps, sometime when feeling brave knock one down(a nest) that is in use, open it up. They eat spiders larger than they are, they apparently semi paralyse them, take them to their nests where they are stored. I opened up several this summer, upwards of 3 dozen or more still kinda alive spiders inside them. Big ones.

    learn new stuff every day, cool.