Posted on 11/06/2025 9:10:09 AM PST by fidelis
A giant colonial spiderweb in a sulfuric cave on the border between Greece and Albania may be the largest ever found — and it was built by spiders we didn't know liked the company of others.
Researchers have discovered more than 111,000 spiders thriving in what appears to be the world's biggest spiderweb, deep inside a pitch-black cave on the Albanian-Greek border.
The "extraordinary" colony consists of a colossal web in a permanently dark zone of the cavern, according to a study published Oct. 17 in the journal Subterranean Biology. The web stretches 1,140 square feet (106 square meters) along the wall of a narrow, low-ceilinged passage near the entrance of the cave. It is a patchwork of thousands of individual, funnel-shaped webs, the researchers noted.
This is the first evidence of colonial behavior in two common spider species and likely represents the largest spiderweb in the world, said study lead author István Urák, an associate professor of biology at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania in Romania.
The spider megacity is located in Sulfur Cave, a cavern that was hollowed out by sulfuric acid formed from the oxidation of hydrogen sulfide in groundwater. While the researchers revealed tantalizing new information about Sulfur Cave's spider colony, they weren't the first to see the giant web. Cavers with the Czech Speleological Society discovered it in 2022 during an expedition in the Vromoner Canyon. A team of scientists then visited the cave in 2024, plucking specimens from the web that Urák analyzed before going on his own expedition to Sulfur Cave.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
I am not sure how they survive, but eating their babies would not be sustainable sustenance.
In Movile Cave, Romania, a unique ecosystem exists in total darkness, relying on chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis. Bacteria there feed on methane and sulfur rising from the Earth’s crust, forming the base of the food chain for over 48 species found nowhere else on Earth, including several types of blind spiders.
Adaptation: These specific spiders have distinct gut microbiomes compared to their relatives above ground, which allows them to process the sulfur-heavy diet that would be toxic to other species.
Diet: Stable isotope analysis revealed that the arachnids in this cave were not eating insects from the outside world but were integrated into the cave’s unique, sulfur-based food web.
They won't count every one. They'll count the number in a segment of the web. then extrapolate to the whole thing.
Hmm, maybe they’re cannibals.
Of Course...I was making a joke.
I dunno. That looks more like 109,537 spiders to me. Plus or minus a couple.
Is Vin Diesel a spider?
They found Pelosi’s birthplace!
No, he’s a biometrically modified human being with night vision...............
YOU, of course...
Cute.
An ironical joke...
They could do something like how they count sheep. Simply count the legs and divide by eight.
(Yes, spiders lose legs sometimes, so this wouldn’t be exact.)
Her mom and dad are still there, but I think the mom ate the dad...
Spiders are the reason why God invented flame throwers.
The one found in Baltimore, Maryland in 2009 was 4 acres and was outdoors.
Was a FR thread about it at that time.
“”Nope! Nope Nope Nope!””
If you come to GA you’ll see spider webs all summer - Joro spiders...They can build a web from a tree, across a driveway, over your car, to bushes/trees on the other side of the driveway. You don’t go to the mailbox without a stick to get them out of your way. No one can come to your front door without ducking the webs.
If you’re unlucky to get stuck in one, the webs stick to you and are very difficult to get off. Any workers I have who need to go to the back of the house, grab a stick from a pile of sticks I keep by the garage so they can fight their way through the webs. Their webs are huge!!! TERRIBLE!!! You can see leaves blowing in midair, in the wind and you think that’s crazy and realize they are stuck in the webs...
I will add another NOPE to yours!!! A plus! People say the Joros eat mosquitoes...well, in GA, that’s good as the mosquitoes here are “stealth” - don’t see or hear them until hours later when your skin is burning from their bite! I have yet to see one and it’s not until you are in bed at night that you know you’ve been bitten!!! Some say they only bite “sweet” people - there is that!!!!
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