A spider web unlike any seen before

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/science/biggest-spiderweb-sulfur-cave.html

by juanplusjuan • 7 months ago

293 142 7 months ago

mkl• 7 months ago

Some other stories about it that got no traction here: https://www.livescience.com/animals/spiders/worlds-biggest-s..., https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-largest-sp...

kennethrc• 7 months ago

... excuse me while I Nope! TF out

Lio• 7 months ago

This is fascinating. My first question would be what are they catching?

What can sustain that number of spiders so far underground?

barryvan• 7 months ago

From the article:

The vast spider population is attributed to an abundant food supply: more than 2.4 million midges in the cave, ready to be entangled in the intricate web.

...although I guess the question then is what sustains the millions of midges!

jbotz• 7 months ago

From the livescience article linked by another poster: biofilm produced by sulfur-eating bacteria, which in turn metabolize sulfur from the sulfur-rich stream in the cave.

So the whole food-chain here is: sulfur -> bacteria -> midges -> spiders.

perihelions• 7 months ago

That's the interesting part! (And which the submitted NYT story regrettably neglects). It's a chemoautotrophic ecosystem[0] largely independent of the sun, and of photosynthetic life.

Akin to hydrothermal vents[1] in the ocean, and the lifeforms that eat that effluent.

[0] https://subtbiol.pensoft.net/article/162344/ ("An extraordinary colonial spider community in Sulfur Cave (Albania/Greece) sustained by chemoautotrophy")

"Stable isotope analyses (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) revealed that the trophic web sustaining this assemblage is fueled by in situ primary production from sulfur-oxidizing microbial biofilms then transferred through chironomid larvae and adults to higher trophic levels."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent

pharrington• 7 months ago

Every part of Earth's crust is jam packed with life.

kijin2• 7 months ago

Also, this web is so dense it looks like a solid sheet of silk, studded with the remains of its past victims. Wouldn't that be a little too conspicuous? I thought spider webs were supposed to be nearly invisible to the prey.

szszrk• 7 months ago

Well the article claims cave is pitch dark, so I guess the invisible part is granted anyway.

dr_dshiv2• 7 months ago

Spiders are super solitary creatures. I wonder, though, if they could become social.

albedoa• 7 months ago

There are hundreds of species of social spiders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_spider

nomilk• 7 months ago

Impressive that there's a wiki article on precisely that topic.

dr_dshiv2• 7 months ago

Wow, thank you! I obviously had no idea!

Although, in terms of numbers, according to that Wikipedia: “Several permutations of social behavior exist amongst the 23 species of spider considered to be quasi-social out of some 45,000 known species of spider”

sph• 7 months ago

You might enjoy the book Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

motoxpro• 7 months ago

The perfect thread and comment to recommend this book!

Nition• 7 months ago

Or maybe A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge.

pwndByDeath2• 7 months ago

It begins!

emmelaich• 7 months ago

Not sure if you'd count it as social, but the dancing spiders certainly put effort into courtship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qkzwG2lLPc Peacock spiders, dance for your life! - BBC

tim3333• 7 months ago

There's youtube of: The Process of Making Friends With a Tiny Spider https://youtu.be/i6ucE1cfzmE

gus_massa• 7 months ago

I've seen old brick wall with a lot of funnel of spiders. (I'm not sure it's the exact same specie of spider.) They were close, but not in contact of each other IIRC. I guess when there is not enough room they get use to have neighbors and then evolution makes them less grumpy.

apricot13• 7 months ago

One half of me is fascinated by this as spiders are such amazing creatures. So long as they don't break our house rules they're welcome to stay, especially the spindles! The other half of me didn't scroll far enough down and a a slither of the video played at the bottom of the screen making me think a spider was running across my arm and made me jump!

colordrops• 7 months ago

Yeah same, we do not bother spiders in the house unless they jump into bed or on food or whatever, and then we just take them outside. With spiders and cats in the house we never see any flies or other insects.

thaumasiotes7• 7 months ago

We have a lot of spiders and yet they don't seem to do much about the silverfish. :(

They do hunt millipedes and then drag the corpses back to their lair to form a millipede graveyard.

bob10292• 7 months ago

I have a rule with the spiders where if they get too bold they get the vacuum. I don't mind them lurking in the corners but I don't want them crawling across my desk. I think most of them understand the arrangement by now. Only occasional enforcement is necessary.

_qua2• 7 months ago

I've never really understood the "spiders protect you from pests" argument. Yeah, sure they eat flies. But I'd much rather have a fly buzz past me and get stuck to some fly paper than have a spider drop from the door frame on an invisible silk thread and slam into my face, or run across my pillow. Maybe I have arachnophobia, but they're freaky little creatures that I don't want in my living space.

divbzero2• 7 months ago

In this case, it’s more on us to not break their house rules when we visit their cave.

plasma_beam• 7 months ago

I feel like a lot of the pro-spider replies have never accidentally disturbed or stepped on a momma wolf spider carrying her babies on back and witnessed the pure terror that ensues as hundreds of babies swarm out across your floor.

reconnecting• 7 months ago

I had so many thoughts about web spiders (crawlers) and what they might create that's never been seen before, until I read this article.

Nature is always several steps ahead.

hacker_88• 7 months ago

All went to the cave to get away from everything

mxkopy• 7 months ago

Oh, to be a spider eating 2.4 million midges

maelito2• 7 months ago

The earth is full of wonders but we're destroying most of them.

functionmouse2• 7 months ago

Not "we", it's the billionaires.

6LLvveMx2koXfwn• 7 months ago

My gas fired central heating is set to 20 degrees C. So if not 'you', then definitely 'me'!

nicbou3• 7 months ago

They produce the goods that we consume. We are the ones working in their marketing department, building their online stores, streamlining consumption. Then we go home and buy stuff we don't need.

Arnt• 7 months ago

It's odd, in a way — when you have a well-paying job, you have nothing from an accounting viewpoint and the owners of the organisation have a valuable asset. The skill that you contribute to the organisation is accounted for as a financial asset belonging to someone else. There are good reasons for that, the accounting viewpoint makes sense for accounting purposes.

In everyday parlance we say that you have a job and you have the skill, and in reality you actually are free to take your skill elsewhere. Your skill plays a part in the market value of your employer, but you stay or leave at your whim, the "owner" of the "asset" doesn't decide.

Those billions are IMO mostly an accounting fiction — it's better to think of it in the way that our ordinary language suggests, where your actions are yours, your skills are yours, etc. If you drive to work, that's your emissions based on your choice, it's not a choice made by someone whose great wealth is mostly an assessment of your skill and earning power.

If you build a house and need some concrete for that, CO₂ is emitted in a concrete factory, but I think it's better to regard the emitted CO₂ as a choice made by you than as emissions by the billionaire who owns the factory. Even if the accountants assess the value of the factory as a large number.

maelito2• 7 months ago

No, the average US citizen destroys the planet. They would too if the economy was owned by large corporations owned by the state. Which is almost the same now that the country is run by oligarchs.

latentsea2• 7 months ago

Who gave them billions of dollars?

tim3333• 7 months ago

We are another invasive species I guess.

Levitz• 7 months ago

Creating a whole lot of them too.

Something as simple as a bakery is amazing.

catigula• 7 months ago

Don't worry, AI will be nice for some reason.

shawabawa32• 7 months ago

"The cave is full of hydrogen sulphide gas in too high concentrations for most animals to survive"

Over a shot of a bunch of people walking around with no masks on?

nosianu2• 7 months ago

Read a bit further, the very next sentence???

“All you could smell was sulfur hydrogen, and you cannot breathe,” Dr. Vrenozi said, recalling that most of the researchers were wearing masks. But as they descended deeper into the cave, she said that “you get used to the smell of spoiled eggs.”

Also, you use "" but you are not quoting, the text inside your quotes does not exist in the article. The actual quote would be

The cave is hard to reach and is filled with foul-smelling hydrogen sulfide gas, in concentrations too great for most animals to live there.

voidUpdate• 7 months ago

Getting used to the smell doesn't mean it's safe though... And isn't the safe level of hydrogen sulphide "if you can smell it, its not safe"?

shawabawa32• 7 months ago

I was quoting the caption in one of the images at the top, not the article itself

tim3333• 7 months ago

Effects of hydrogen sulphide:

Acute inhalation exposure to high concentrations may result in collapse, respiratory paralysis, cyanosis, convulsions, coma, cardiac arrhythmias, and death within minutes.
Exposure to low concentrations may irritate the eyes and respiratory tract, resulting in sore throat, cough, and dyspnoea.

I guess they were at the low end.

thaumasiotes7• 7 months ago

This NYT article opens with a video showing the web and some explanatory text.

The archive.today copy doesn't play the video. The thumbnail image is present. The <video> tag is present on the archived page, but its src attribute has been renamed to "old-src". Re-renaming the old-src attribute back to "src" will cause the video to play, but at that point you're playing the original non-archived video directly from nyt.com. This will presumably break if NYT takes the video down.

Does archive.today not archive videos?

eimrine6• 7 months ago

enough good is to archive everything except videos

thaumasiotes7• 7 months ago

The team of scientists discovered that 69,000 Tegenaria domestica, known as the barn funnel weaver, were living with about 42,000 Prinerigone vagans, which inhabit wet places. Usually the barn funnel weavers prey on P. vagans, which are smaller.
“But in the cave, because it’s dark in there, our hypothesis was that they do not see each other,” Blerina Vrenozi, a biologist, zoologist and ecologist at the University of Tirana in Albania said in an interview. “So they do not attack.”

I thought one of the major purposes of spiderwebs was that the spider can detect the presence of something else in the web without needing to be able to see it.

acomjean• 7 months ago

I think you are right. If I remember there were 2 types of silk, and they could use their legs to “listen” to vibrations when something gets caught anywhere in the web. They seem to avoid getting stuck in their own webs.

But they do have 8 eyes, so I’m assuming they make visual confirmation. But these cave spiders are in the dark…

BirAdam• 7 months ago

Depending upon the species, spiders can make more types of silk: strong, soft, sticking, sensing, etc.

Most spiders have terrible eyesight despite having eight eyes. Those with good eyesight are jumping spiders, portia, and a few ground spiders. These species are easily distinguished by having two large front-facing eyes.

Due to bad eyesight, most spiders use touch through their webs and/or hairs. The hirsute species can easily identify pretty much anything that causes a wind current near them, and most all species can easily identify prey by the distinct vibrations they make once caught in the web.

If you watch most spiders, however, they can occasionally be fooled on windy day when a leaf or other detritus hits their webs, and they have to go touch it to find out it isn't prey. Eyesight just isn't a thing most are great with.

bulletsvshumans• 7 months ago

Maybe the glut of conventional food leaves the prospect of eating their compatriots less appetizing.

thaumasiotes7• 7 months ago

Probably not; these aren't closely related spiders. It would be like a human eating a monkey, which is something humans like doing.

But if the smaller spiders can fight back at all, it might well make that battle less appealing.

ZuzuDuck• 7 months ago

OMG, thats look so terrifying and amazing at the same time

pjb88• 7 months ago

What advantage would the inside spiders have? Surely they wouldn't catch any bugs?

Or are they building a structure that's attractive for bugs to enter? What's the strategy for this web?

alienbaby• 7 months ago

The article mentions that the caves are filled with millions of midges providing plenty of food.

abejfehr• 7 months ago

I think they're referring to the spiders that are deep in the web, since the midges presumably don't make it that deep

eimrine6• 7 months ago

They may have more chances to change their skin unnoticed in the silent place.

oneseven• 7 months ago

midges can fly, so presumably they would hit the web at random points. as to why flying would be useful for the midges, if they consume biofilms on the surfaces, that's less clear. perhaps over time the midges will evolve away from flying and the spiders will have to adjust their strategy.

metronomer• 7 months ago

We did it, we discovered Pharloom.

le-mark• 7 months ago

I once had an apartment in an old building. The building had high ceilings and equally high wood frame windows. The windows were drafty and had visible gaps to the outside. As winter approached, and nights grew colder I set out to cover the windows with plastic film (common here for this purpose).

While preparing one window in the bedroom I discovered a silken patch like a miniature of the one depicted in this article. I used my cleaning rag to wipe it away thinking any inhabitants had long since moved on. To my surprise a wisp tiny spiders scurried away from my swipe, disappearing into crevices, the base board, and carpet. Startled and not seeing any to kill, I bid them farewell, in my mind assuring myself they had moved on.

That same day or the next a cold wave came through and I lied awake in bed listening to the plastic I had applied rustle from the wind. The window gaps were bigger than I’d thought. Falling into a fitful sleep under not quite adequate blankets, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my lower leg! I jumped out of bed, turned a light, and found upon examination three red punctures on my left calf. Recalling the spiders from the day before I shook out my blankets and bed sheets. I checked below the bed. Nothing, I never found the culprits.

After sleeping that night on the couch, I awoke late the next. I felt feverish and disoriented. The wounds on my calf had become inflamed. The cold in the apartment added to my discomfort.

The next few days were a blur. I missed work and the few social engagements I had planned. Eventually the wounds began to heal but I was still bone cold and the light from windows hurt my eyes. Winter has set in and the plastic I’d applied to the windows had detached from the wind allowing icy drafts into the apartment. I diligently applied another layer of plastic on the windows, this time using packing tape to secure the corners!

It was a harsh winter and I repeated this process several times until the windows were opaque and along with the shades allowing very little light through.

One day as I sat in the dark slowly eating my meal there was a knock on the door. It was my close friend from work wondering what had happened to me. I must have been a sight judging from his startled appearance.

Summer came and I emerged occasionally to acquire food and other necessities only to scurry back home when the outside became too overwhelming. I eventually found remote work, and here I am today in my cold dark apartment with high ceilings and drafty windows.

Note if you made it to the end, thanks for indulging me. This is based on a real apartment, windows and spiders!

antisthenes• 7 months ago

I'd read a short story or a novella written by you. Hope it was not LLMd.

foltik• 7 months ago

On planet earth — population 8.3 billion — were apes that had not been known to live together harmoniously, having previously thought to be hostile to each other.

ChrisArchitect• 7 months ago

Non-paywall link from a previous submission when there were numerous posts about this without discussion: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/science/biggest-spiderweb...

briandw• 7 months ago

The big problem with farming spiders for silk is that you can’t have a dense colony of them. This could a solution to that. Breeding these to make super strong silk to harvest would be really cool. Although you have to have a way of separating the strands to make thread.

awei• 7 months ago

Strangely reminiscent of "Children of Time"'s beginnings of spider intelligence

RyanOD• 7 months ago

I came here to mention the same book.

naet• 7 months ago

I read that book blind recently. Did not expect the spiders, but ended up liking those chapters the most.

AstroNutt• 7 months ago

The Wraith have arrived!

Anyone that watched Stargate Atlantis gets it.

ultim8k• 7 months ago

Run

ekropotin• 7 months ago

I’d be careful - this spider web may be a gateway to Upside Down. Let’s just cement the whole cave just in case.

mikeyinternews• 7 months ago

The headline is very Trumpian

xvilka• 7 months ago

I felt very bad for spider families who worked hard across generations to build a big and beautiful comfortable home for some clueless ancient giant with abhorrent moving appendages on its legs to tear it down with a horrific metallic instrument of torment.

eimrine6• 7 months ago

Not a problem at all, they have a midge budget to fix it with their chitin.

lawlessone• 7 months ago

Usually the barn funnel weavers prey on P. vagans, which are smaller.
“But in the cave, because it’s dark in there, our hypothesis was that they do not see each other,”

Will they start fighting one another now lights are being shone on them?

divbzero2• 7 months ago

The cave stays at about 80 degrees year-round.

That seems remarkably warm. Is that typical for cave temperatures?

ricksunny• 7 months ago

Odd use of the word 'pastiche'

"The wider web is actually a pastiche of thousands of individual funnel-shaped webs,"

eimrine6• 7 months ago

If some spiders of these two species are going to find new home without dark, will they continue to be friends?

A spider web unlike any seen before

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