November 18, 2004

What would it look like if millions of spiders spun webs in one place? For reasons that area scientists don't really understand, millions and millions of tiny black spiders called Halorates ksenius - they have no common name - became trapped in Russell Jervis' clover field and started spinning webs.
posted by Brandon Blatcher 20 years ago
  • Well if that doesn't give you a case of heebie-jeebies, nothing will. Excellent link!
  • Oh lordy. Oh dear. Oh my. *shudder*
  • Very interesting! Well-written article too.
  • man those spiders know how to party
  • I'm scard of spiders, hate them, will usually kill them on sight. Yes, I know they help with bugs around the house, but it's a phobia. But those pictures were just wonderful. However if you read the post after the article I cited, you'll see something about a certain spider species developing a taste for human flesh. Sigh.
  • They remind me of tent caterpillars. Perhaps even more evil than spiders...
  • What would it look like if millions of spiders at your face?
  • *ate fucktard. Drunk again. feh
  • like seems to be hosed...anyone have another link to this??
  • ouch "like" = link
  • The link was down for me too, but it seems to working again now. I hate spiders with a deep, deep passion, yet somehow I still click the link?! The picture of the guy with the humungous spider on his hand make me feel slightly queasy... *shivers*
  • afx237vi, thanks for assuring me that I should NEVER click that link. I was pretty certain anyway, being plagued as I am with nearly pathological arachniphobia (*shudder*) "guy with humungous spider on his hand" oh, I really REALLY dont like that. going away now...
  • Yeah, I've had days like that.
  • The web is truly lovely, but I want to see the bug they're expecting to catch, especially if it's just 1 big one, not just lots of (relatively) wee ones.
  • OKAY I AM REALLY CREEPED OUT. THANKS VERY MUCH.
  • Ha ha. Now I know Alex Reynolds' weakness! apart from all the other ones
  • Hmmm. Spiders gone wild. I'm going to send this to everyone I know with a heart condition. Fascinating article and great pix, though.
  • I'M OFF TO MEFI NOW. ENJOY YOUR SPIDERS. kidding, kidding
  • Definitely creepy. And very fascinating. But what really got to me was the picture of the post, which was covered with thick webs. You could see the teeny spiders on top of the web, and you could see the teeny spiders under the web. I don't know if I'll ever get that picture out of my head.
  • A web page about a different sort of SPDR, with a cute Flash-based navigation system.
  • Holy crap. That's cooooooool. And creepy. Are those black splotches other spiders trapped in the web? *shudder*
  • "maybe it was an effort collectively by these spiders to try and catch a sheep." Anyone have a guess as to what their food source was?
  • el_hombre: I work at the AMEX. Glad to know my monthly membership fees are going towards something useful.
  • Yeah the big spiderwebs are fine and all, but I'm a bit more concerned with the story lower down about people finding live black widows IN THEIR FOOD! Enjoy those organic grapes while you can, my friend.
  • For the price of organic grapes, I ought to get a spider every now and then. Or a kitten...
  • Does anyone else see a sinister hand at work in the juxtaposition of this and the Cthulhu thread above? Bwaaaaahaaaahaaaa. . . cool story & photos though. I like spiders.
  • Ok, I may be the only person here who made it down to the tarantulas article (I have no problem with spiders and find them fascinating.) THAT'S where the really interesting stuff is. A researcher has been studying various species of tarantula and found mammal-like behavior in some of them, including females starving thenselves to nurture their young. (something unheard of in spiders) But I have to say, people using Black freaking Widows as pest control are INSANE. We're talking about potentially deadly creatures here. Using helpful spiders, that's cool and organic. But mobs of arachs that can and will kill people? That's not a good idea. At all.
  • "females starving thenselves to nurture their young. (something unheard of in spiders)" It's unheard of? But Huntsmen spider females do exactly that. They even carry the sack of eggs around with them in their jaws, sometimes, if the locale becomes undesireable.
  • That is so freaking cool. Thanks BB. And InnocentBystander: You don't understand. You use Black Widows as pest control. Then, when they get out of hand, you bring in a shitload of your deadly spider-eating cobras to take care of them. And when they get to be a problem, all you need is a few dozen crateloads of rabid mongooses (mongeese?) to get rid of those. And finally, when the mongeese are done with the snakes and turn their frothing maws towards the population at large, you nuke the lot of em. It makes sense.
  • That Dysdera Crocata spider is mighty scary-lookin', yo. I bet in the middle of those sixty acres they find a be-webbed cabin with the skeleton of a young Bill Shatner inside. That's what I bet.
  • Clearly a case for Fox and Dana. Clearly. (Opaquely?)
  • Come on, I bet we can come up with a common name for these 8 legged bodies of horror.
  • In other news: Tesco yesterday admitted using deadly Black Widow spiders to kill off insects in its bunches of grapes. The shock revelation comes after three women found Black Widows — two of them ALIVE — in fruit they bought at different Tesco stores. The spiders, which have red markings on their backs, were introduced to Tesco vineyards in California as an alternative to pesticide, following customer demand for “natural” food.
  • I'll bet what Tesco's not telling you is that the black widows are paying them plenty for fresh "natural" human prey. I say this investigation demands a FPP.
  • Oh lookie. My own personal hell here on earth. Great.
  • "The average human eats 8 spiders in his/her lifetime while sleeping." Great, just great
  • "People are taught to be afraid of spiders," he says. "That's disgusting. Anyone who was afraid of spiders wouldn't have gone near this, and they would have missed something extraordinary. Adults inadvertently destroy their children's interest in science and nature by telling them to be afraid of spiders. They should stop." Of course the very next article is: Spider Attacks in Merseyside Damn the arachnological journalists and damn their irony!
  • Brandon Blatcher, have to thank you for one of the most interesting natural history posts I've seen here -- the article "Stalking Spiders" at the bottom of the page is outstanding. It's about tarantulas primarily, and one of the few experts on these sometimes altruistic and unusally intelligent sounding little creatures. )))!!! Thanks!
  • fighting compulsion to speak of many spider/bugs parts in peanut butter and-- i rather like spiders until they climb on my face and have a strange respect for a two legged ghost spider that dragged itself across a canvas of mine once-- 'scusi, must this wacky sleep thing i heard about while my comp continues to load stuff