Oh, I'm sure some of them are just adorable.
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 ...
Just F No
Sure they like the company of other spiders. They can’t see what any of ‘em look like.
Oh, I'm sure some of them are just adorable.
Never liked that movie.
Well, my spelunker ambitions just came to abrupt end.
My nephew's wife is from Transylvania. As of now, she hasn't exhibited any tendencies of biting. But the family is keeping an eye on her.........
It’s a big Full Moon out there tonight.
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