Spiders Have Exploded Over Greek Town, Coating Everything in a 1000 Foot Web | Hacker News Reader

Spiders Have Exploded Over Greek Town, Coating Everything in a 1000 Foot Web

sciencealert.com

This is a great thing. You don't want mosquitos carrying diseases. I'd rather deal with my arachnophobia than get malaria.

A "population explosion".

Following the population explosion of mosquitoes.

I'd take 1000 spiders over 100 mosquitos anytime. I consider spiders to be most useful insects you could have infesting your house, though on the other hand I wouldn't feel comfortable if I saw more than a couple in a room.

Imagine trained spiders. They stay out of sight, only spin webs in places we don't walk around, or build the web every night then tear it down before we wake up.

The one living in the side mirror of my car all summer seems to have learned not to build where my window will break it. Oh and the one on the side of my garage where I take garbage 3 times a day stopped building to the fence after just a few breaks, so early in the summer ive forgotten how annoying it was to get a face full of web every morning.

Ob-Nit: spiders are not insects. They have eight legs, insects have six.

One morning there were 250+ baby spiders (huntsman I think) in a corner of my kitchen ceiling once a couple of years ago, moving out around the kitchen. I counted them as I squashed them. I like spiders, but the thought of 250+ big spiders inside was too freaky.

The following comment is not sarcasm...

Thanks for this. I figured it out when I got to the "coating everything..." bit, but I was indeed initially intrigued by "exploding" spiders. "OMG, a new scientific discovery? Something one researcher knew about 40yrs ago but no one ever reported on? What in this Greek town would ignite such an event to bring this into public awareness? ... oh, population ^facepalm^"

Well that's distinctly terrifying, until you realize what's more terrifying is catching malaria. Especially considering that plasmodium is becoming drug-resistant.

Reminds me of the Wastewater Treatment Plant incident[1], which I learned about from Randal Munroe's What If? blog[2].

[1] (pdf) 'An Immense Concentration of Orb-Weaving Spiders With Communal Webbing in a Man-Made Structural Habitat" https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V3jDXZNk5Tta_3Imj5xnir053bB...

[2] Spiders vs. the Sun https://what-if.xkcd.com/136/

If the right conditions are heat and humidity, and mosquitoes are recently seen in this area more than usual, global warming could make this more common.

Oh cool we found nope town

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