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I didnt know social spiders already existed, reminded me of this 2002 BBC speculative documentary: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0kGtDyuXMDU where the last mammals are hamsters that communal spider society herds :D
It is hard to imagine just from those photos. And that is probably a good thing 😬
Amazing!
This finding is the first documented case of colonial behavior between two solitary species of spider
And one species (Prinerigone vagans) is 2-3mm, the other (Tegenaria domestica) 7.5-11.5mm in body length.
Like a bunch of introverted humans and cats prob.
Tens of thousands thriving in total darkness on a shared web? Sounds familiar.
Spiderlemmy! Spiderlemmy! Does whatever a Spiderlemmy does!
Woah, could this actually turn spider silk farms viable?
Sounds like the conditions that allow for this are pretty specific, and while you could harvest this, it would likely decimate the population.
Could it be artificially recreated? Probably, but at that point it’s looped back around to being non-viable.
Yeah, the conditions are specific, but that’s also true for Wasabi and truffles. The big problem with spiders has always been their canabalistic and solitary natures. Truffles and Wasabi don’t kill eachother.
Also just because the biome is specific, doesn’t mean it’s necessary. Biggest issues are probably their immune system. Such isolated things are usually easily hit by fungus or bacteria.
According to the article, the air smells like rotten eggs, there are sulphur-converting bacteria in the air, tiny little midges everywhere, and that dude just stands there with no protection other than an overall and a helmet.
Oh yeah, and a crap-ton of spiders.
Menzoberranzan
imagine how many bugs must be in there for them to all stay fed
in the cave, the air close to the stream is packed with tiny Tanytarsus albisutus midges, whose larvae feed on the bacterial biofilms at the water’s edge. Their density – 45,000 per sq m (about 4,180 per sq ft) – provides an all-you-can-eat buffet for the spider colony, which essentially eradicates any food competition that would normally exist.
Okay I want to unimagine it now
I hope there is a video of this
It is hard to decide what is worse, 45k bugs per m² or 110k spiders with a communal net dining on them…
I’m just glad they are staying in that condemned cave.
Don’t the spiders get bored of eating the same shit all day, every day?
Two words: M SG
You gonna eat the same shit every day or choose to die?
Chinese again? We had chinese food yesterday.
People in china eat chinese food every day.
Cannibalism
I like spiders, they eat mosquitoes
Yes. To the people cowering away from this cave, at least there are probably no mosquitoes.
Yes!
Half of these at least.
The rest are prob a bit tiny.My bedroom has super high ceilings, and one night, there was a fly in there. Not just a fly, it was the fattest fly i have ever seen. It was so loud that i couldn’t sleep. She also decided to land on my face every other minute. Because of the high ceilings, i didn’t even see a point to try to catch it, that thing absolutely terrorised me. Suddenly i heard how she flapped her wings erratically so i jumped up and investigated.
The smallest spider in my whole house just made the catch of her lifetime.i pointed at it and laughed like an insane super villain. I love my little spider friends.
Yep. They’ve earned all my love just for this small beautiful fact. 🕸💕
Another reason to leave those caves alone
It’s making me want to go to there.
Nope
Holy makerel, that’s a lot 🕷️ 🕸️
Yeesh. Walking though a web housing just one spider is bad enough … And that’s when there’s light for me to see what happened.
Yeah, same here.
why does this make me hungry
