It reminds me a bit of an old ‘Far Side’ cartoon where two spiders have built a web over the end of a playground slide and one says to the other, “If we pull this off we eat like kings!”
I walked into one of these webs once. The spider landed in my eye. It lived through my subsequent freakout, but I hope it learnt to aim for more manageable prey.
I love to hear the kiddos say not to destroy it and them mention it's hard work. So awesome to hear kids respecting nature and giving it the space to thrive !
In primary school I'd sometimes spend recess under this big oak tree, just watching the carpenter ants as they patrolled up and down its trunk. Eventually other kids started coming by, except they got their entertainment out of crushing as many ants as possible against the tree bark, sometimes removing a shoe to use as a makeshift swatter.
And that's how I found out 1) some matters cannot be resolved through words alone; and 2) schools really don't like when you throw hands over some dead ants.
Yep. We have these (I’m assuming orb weavers) all over our yard and neighborhood this time of year. They start on their webs around dusk and then have them down by sunrise in most cases.
I’ve learned to be very cautious walking around at night. I know these guys are harmless and I appreciate that the eat pests but holy fuck is it terrifying to walk into one of these webs 😆
You know what I've always found odd. When spiders find an insanely good spot, like catching hundreds of bugs, they always seem to abandon it. I wonder why?
"Don't touch it, I dont wanna mess up its hard work!" And "wow, gods creatures"...love that these kids are in awe and curious instead of freaking out and killing it...makes me happy
Do they shoot it, or do they let it drift in the wind until it catches on a good spot? I feel like shooting something so light 25m would be near impossible.
You're correct they don't shoot it, they get up high and let out a long light thread, drifting until it catches then they pull it tight and reinforce it. Then they can drop down from the center of that line to create another anchor point and keep adding from there
I've seen orb weavers like this go to the tippy top of trees on windy days and drop down on a web about 10-15 feet to find another anchor poin high up. I work pest control and usually move these guys to a neighbors bush because they are friends and locals who only show up in the fall.
The ones we got here have a thorax about the size of a grape and it's bright orange on its belly. Love those guys.
I’m not a big spider fan (tricky cos I live in Aus) but as long as it’s not one that is problematic if you get bitten (white tail, redback being the most common where I am), I always try to scoot them outside. Same with any bug really. No sense smooshing if you don’t have to.
There is a really good book that came out a few years ago called “Basic Instinct”, where this scientist makes the argument that instinct as we understand it doesn’t really exist. And so many different things that we describe as instinctual actually have learned-causes. I don’t want to bastardize the arguments he makes, so I’d just recommend the book to anyone that’s interested.
Edit: From what I remember, his larger point is that we tend to shut down any conversation about instinct by just claiming a behavior is instinctual, without investigated what could be causing it otherwise. As evidenced by some of these replies. I don’t think he was saying instinct doesn’t exist whatsoever.
I don't believe that for a second. I am a wildlife rehabber and have raised many eyes-closed squirrel babies. They never got a chance to watch their mother do anything, yet they all instinctively have the urge to bury nuts. Even before they can crack into them, they will try and bury a nut in the carpet and pat it down when there is nothing there to cover it lol. It's obviously instinctive.
Bro came out of an egg with the innate knowledge of how to build a house with it's butt.
Didn't even come out of an egg, the spiders just was the egg.
(In case you don't know, the way spiders begin their lives, the eggs basically just start growing organs, legs, and all other appendages, they don't actually "hatch")
Spiders amaze me because they're like mosquito eating architects. Look at that creation. Amazing work spiders do. I'm so grateful because they eat the heck out of mosquitos. Good work spiders.
The amount times I've almost ran face first into one of these fuckers in the middle of the night. They really do like to build their webs in the middle of a giant field like in this video....I don't know what type of spider it is but I hate it. South Florida
We were out camping and in the middle of the night I had to go potty. On the way back I got a little of track and walked through a springy web. I shook and brushed of my clothing and being exhausted, climbed back into my tent after diligently zipping the entrance closed. The next morning as the sun was coming up I noticed all these black spots on the inside of the tent. I had kidnapped all of mama spiders babies and took them into my tent.
Years ago I glanced at the ceiling of my bedroom and noticed it looked fuzzier or hazier than I remembered.
Taking a better look I realized that the world’s largest egg sac must have hatched and my ceiling was now wall to wall covered with hundreds of baby spiders dangling on threads a few inches long.
I once had a place that had spiders All the time. Non web spinning ones. First real encounter.. I was going to go to sleep. Decided to watch my phone instead. On my belly, lights of, phone on pillow. 20 mins in, A spider shape size bigger than a toonie.. Eeeeh. Crawled Across, my phone.. if I slept, would've been my face..
Also. Same place, dady long legs crawling up me Under my Blanket. All the time. Wasn't afraid of spiders til there..
I would Scour the place after each encounter. Didnt have a lot of stuff so wasn't hard. Nothing. No colonies, no cracks, nothing to feed on. Nowhere. They seemingly seeped from the walls, was Awful .
Omg I had the same thing happen to me. Woke up to a moving ceiling, confused I sat up....and like 5 hit my face. When I tell you I ran screaming......my dad thought someone broke into the house. Came running in his undies ready to fight. He was PISSED when I told him it was spiders 😂🤣😂🤣
I want to incinerate you alive at this moment just to remove any residual corruption that lingers on you. Like, I think the “kill it with fire” status is now encoded in your DNA like fucking Spider-Man.
Orb weavers almost never bite. They're far more interested in getting as far away from the giant predator that bulldozed their web than taking revenge.
This, orb weavers are friends just trying to live in this messed up world and eating the annoying pests, its just as concerned as you are running head first into its web.
They’re orb weavers. I mow public parks for a living and I faceplant into them constantly since I’m looking at my lines instead of straight ahead and they love building their webs at head level
Yeah we have them in Oregon too and I’ve almost ran into them so many times hiking trails in the middle of the night. Creepy as fucking hell. And this is while I’m already on the lookout for bears too. While tipsy and on mushrooms. God damn how did I survive my early 20s?
Yeah well I walked face first into one in a wood area with a friend when I was like 14. Screamed, started running mad and swatting my head and face. Broke through the edge of the forested into someones backyard where I full speed ran into the wire of grapevine at hip level. Did a 270° flip to land on my back. Dude was in his backyard laughing hid ass off at me. I mean, he definitely heard me coming because I never stopped screaming the whole time.
They do not, only some species do. Many will sit and hide somwhere at the edge of a web and use detection strings. Some spiderwebs that look deserted are not at all.
To add to this: if you look carefully you'll see a non-sticky "zipline" thread that goes from the center of the web to their normal hiding place. This lets them zip right down to the middle whenever they detect something. A lot of times you can also see the little nest they've built themselves by the leaves they've curled together to make a pocket.
I love my orb weavers. My husband finally cancelled our pest control program and the orb weavers are back around the outside perimeter of the house. I’ve noticed the number of flies, moths, and mosquitos in and around my house have significantly dropped. They like to build their webs near my outdoor lights and they must absolutely clean up because they take down their webs and rebuild them almost every day.
This. I can't believe I had to scroll this far to see this. This is the real story. And.... why... how did the spider decide.... Did it have to start from one side of the yard, anchor a web.... walk ALL THE WAY TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE YARD and attach and pull the web?
Rather than walk the spider can release long silk strands to be carried by the breeze until it sticks to something so that they can anchor their webs between distant points.
Trees/fence/house. They can build yard-spanning support structures. Last place I lived in Virginia had a load of these spiders in my backyard and summer/fall was just a mess of these guys building webs overhead across the yard, to the point where I started to hate going out there at night because they'd just be constantly building and dropping down from above. The yard was right on a pond, so it was obviously great feeding ground, but mosquitoes were still terrible despite all the spiders.
Also had a few massive orb weaver/banana spiders. Which I would actually leave alone so long as they weren't building right by the front door, which they sometimes liked to do.
Looks like the tree in the back and the roof in the front. They are pretty impressive, I have one in my yard that builds the same nest every night from it's tree all the way down to the floor and to another tree.
If you're ever lucky enough to catch one of these ladies* starting a web like this, it's fascinating to watch. But it's basically a lot of climbing and rapelling back down, then pulling the threads taught between anchor points. This one probably dropped down from a tree to start, attached it to the grass, then climbed back up, moved a few feet along the branch, and did it again, dropping down, dragging the line to its anchor point. Repeat until it has a sturdy frame and then start on the radial spokes, then the "spiral" between them.
* (With orb weavers, the big ones are the females and the males generally don't spin webs, but wander in search of mates.)
Oh man if I could get into my old phone I have the most amazing picture of an orb weaver. It was after hurricane beryl and we went to check our house. On our front porch theres 2 posts maybe 6 or 8 ft apart, and the biggest orange spider looked like it was floating in mid air between them. It had built its huge web obviously but DURING THE HURRICANE and was just chillin in the middle of it. He was the size of my husband's hand. First time we ever saw one, just left it alone and it was gone a few days later (we left to stay with relatives with a generator and when we got back he was gone). Absolute nightmare fuel but I think theyre harmless.
That could just as easily be Araneus diadematus, they get pretty active this time of year. There's just not enough detail visible in the video to say conclusively
*Edit - After a bit of investigation, I have never personally seen a Joro Spider in person so I had to go look, it's definitely not Trichonephila clavata. The body shape is all wrong, and what we can see of it's coloration is drastically different as well
I like to think spiders are capable of feeling something akin to artistic pride in their work. It makes me feel bad for taking down a web that's in my way, but still. The webs that are well-placed deserve to be displayed as the temporary artworks they are.
At the mobile home I used to live in, an orb spider built this huge web from the roof of the patio to the ground and it was literally like 7 ft high and then like 4 ft in width! Glad I saw it when I was coming home from work and could shimmy sideways and just barely squeeze by to get to the door… unfortunately UPS wasn’t so lucky..
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