Sorry I'm not home right now / I'm walking into spiderwebs

September 23, 2018 5:24 AM

Giant spiders' web covers Greek beach [The Guardian] “A Greek beach has been turned into an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare, as spiders have covered it in a web some 300 metres long. The web has been built by spiders of the Tetragnatha genus. They are often known as stretch spiders, as they have elongated bodies – and in another worrying development for those who fear spiders – Tetragnatha extensa are small enough and light enough to be able to run across water faster than they can move on land.” [YouTube]
posted by Fizz (34 comments total)

Ahhh! Super cool! I've seen some weirdly elongated spiders hanging out on our screen door this summer, and after looking at some photos I think they must be Tetragnatha or some related taxon of spiders. Thanks for posting!

Don't think I'd hang out at that beach, though! Not sure how easy it is to launder spidersilk out of a bathing suit.
posted by eirias at 5:41 AM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Not sure how easy it is to launder spidersilk out of a bathing suit.

And I'm now imagining a bathing suit made out of spidersilk.

*shivers*
posted by Fizz at 5:45 AM on September 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

For anyone interested, here is a video of some close ups of this particular genus. [YouTube]
posted by Fizz at 6:10 AM on September 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

Take that, mosquitoes. I approve.
posted by flabdablet at 6:28 AM on September 23, 2018 [15 favorites]

They've pitched a great silken pavilion for a few last days of celebratory sexytimes and feasting. And then the Death Of Spiders will pass its dark wing across them, and they will be gone, leaving tattered pennants streaming in the wind.
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 6:45 AM on September 23, 2018 [36 favorites]

Beautiful and haunting pictures, made more appealing by the fact that they do not show actual spiders.
posted by pangolin party at 6:46 AM on September 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Mod note: Folks, the performative freaking out about spiders is something we'd really like to avoid, as it distracts from the actual topic of the thread. Thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 7:40 AM on September 23, 2018 [34 favorites]

While there is something startling and perhaps fearful about encountering so vast a community of spiders, there is also wonder. I imagine coming upon this festival of arachnids and thinking, "This is real. This is a thing that happens. Wow!"
posted by SPrintF at 8:02 AM on September 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

This is pretty much what my evening walks at dusk feel like in my fevered imagination. A single spiderweb across the face and I am in Shelob's web.
posted by srboisvert at 8:17 AM on September 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

Any concern that the plants will suffer? Are they all just fine being completely covered in a layer of spiderweb? I’m assuming so, since the article said they don’t cause any damage, but figured one of you would know. Hard to imagine you could throw an unexpected layer completely over a plant and it wouldn’t have any effect on its health, though.
posted by greermahoney at 8:21 AM on September 23, 2018

And I'm now imagining a bathing suit made out of spidersilk.

*shivers*

Wait until you see my cravat made out of spiders!

Slightly more seriously: no, neither spiders nor the webs are dangerous to humans, plants, or beaches.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:47 AM on September 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

The rise of Arachid-communism is a historical inevitability.
posted by The Whelk at 8:47 AM on September 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

So fucking cool!
posted by rtha at 8:53 AM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Sorry I'm not home right now / I'm walking into spiderwebs

... so leave a message and I'll call you back.

[beep]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
posted by mhoye at 8:54 AM on September 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

I'm guessing it's the preferred form in British English, but "Giant spider's web" (as opposed to "spiderweb" or "spider web") strongly implies that the Greek beach has been covered by the web of a single, giant spider.
posted by wreckingball at 9:24 AM on September 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Tetragnatha extensa are small enough and light enough to be able to run across water faster than they can move on land

so what i'm taking away from this is that jesus was a spider
posted by poffin boffin at 9:56 AM on September 23, 2018 [8 favorites]

at last a religion that meets my needs
posted by poffin boffin at 9:56 AM on September 23, 2018 [8 favorites]

Disappointed that the headline "giant spiders' web" doesn't mean a web made by giant spiders.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 10:19 AM on September 23, 2018

I like the idea of someone falling asleep under a beach umbrella and waking up cocooned.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:00 AM on September 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

I've definitely warmed up to spiders lately. I mean, actually actively liking them and having internal reactions like "Oh cool! Hi!" and not just tolerating them.

Which is good because we have some pretty darn big spiders in the PNW, including the aptly named Giant House Spider or whatever generic name it's kind is going by these days. And the places I can afford to live have been by one metric and arc the same places the spiders generally like to live - basements, garages, old RVs, camping, etc.

A couple of years ago I was living in a rather dilapidated old doublewide trailer, where I was sleeping on the carpeted floor on a very basic mattress in a sleeping bag. I woke up to something moving around on my shoulder under my sleeping bag, and it felt like a mouse.

Nah, just a giant house spider. Rustling around in my sleeping bag. I did freak out over that one, but since then I've had 'em on my pillow a bunch of times and now I'm more freaked out about accidentally crushing them in my sleep than I am about any phobic reactions.

Much less "GAH" and much more "Oh, you poor thing. You're looking for a boyfriend, I know, it's that time of year again."

There's one giant house spider outside the door here in the corner of a stairway, deep in a crack. I didn't even know it was there until a fat damsel fly landed on one of its trigger webs and the spider bolted out and snatched up the fly and back again so fast you could barely see it.

And they eat all kinds of nasty bugs like earwigs and house centipedes and even common house flies and fruit flies.

And since the spiders people see hunting and building webs are almost always female, they're not our spiderbros. They are our spidersisters!

You should be very afraid of the idea of an Earth without spiders. It would be horrible.
posted by loquacious at 11:41 AM on September 23, 2018 [17 favorites]

they have absolutely no business being any bigger than a pea and that is my final word on the subject, good day.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:26 PM on September 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

This post needs a theme song that also connects to another FPP.
posted by sonascope at 12:40 PM on September 23, 2018

Now I'm always going to wonder: Giant spider webs or a new Cristo art project?

I used to ride my bike to work and ride past a huge field. When the field was freshly plowed in the spring and I was riding at just the right time in the morning, I would see the sheen of a continuous covering of silk over that field. it made me appreciate all the spider activity in our lives we aren't aware of.
posted by acrasis at 12:42 PM on September 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

Oh those pics look do cool! So otherwordly! I'm a big spider fan. All the ones I've met and gotten to know have been, charming, fascinating creatures.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 1:26 PM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

I've always liked spiders. Mainly because they eat insects and I am utterly and completely repulsed by insects. I hate them so much. If I see a spiders building up shop in my place I figure they wouldn't be there if there weren't any bugs so they are utterly and completely welcome to stay as long as they like.

If that beach is covered like that the amount of bugs there probably warrants a team of exterminators.
posted by fantasticness at 2:37 PM on September 23, 2018

Note that the beach in question is not a beach by the sea, but a beach in a closed lagoon, pretty much a lake. I would bet that this sort of phenomenon would be improbable near the actual sea coast.
As an aside, Aitoliko (pronounced: Etoliko) is a pretty unique town, location-wise, being built around a small island in the middle of said lagoon
posted by talos at 3:11 PM on September 23, 2018

Beautiful.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:39 PM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is the third or fourth time I've come across this phenomenon, I've seen pictures like these from Texas, Pakistan and now Greece. All three were near water bodies and the Pakistan one was after flooding. The really interesting part of this phenomenon is that these spiders usually build orb webs and are fairly territorial and aggressive to spiders of the same species (like most spiders). But during time of extreme food abundance and perhaps lack of substrates to build webs, they abandon their orb webs and sort of do this en masse thing where they tolerate each other. I think the key is usually a huge amount of food possibly because of insect boom caused by floods. This is especially interesting because food abundance is hypothesized to be one pathway to sociality in spiders (there are a few social species, and their origin is still debated)
posted by dhruva at 3:42 PM on September 23, 2018 [10 favorites]

I followed this link along to a link about new peacock spider species being discovered in Australia, because yay peacock spiders, and then watched a long hypnotic video of the winding dance the he-spider does, and then found myself screaming "WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?!?!" at my phone because content warning, at about 6:15 into the second video the male spider twists the female spider's abdomen upside down
posted by gusandrews at 5:14 PM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Nice work fellas
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:11 PM on September 23, 2018

Look, I know some of you came here for the LOLs but I was really hoping for the LOLTH.
posted by Metro Gnome at 7:07 PM on September 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

I was about to propose a field trip for my local chapter of the FlameThrower Club, but the thoughtful pleas of clemency here from Team Spider have soothed my bug-eyed mania. somewhat
posted by CynicalKnight at 7:10 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: performative freaking out about spiders
posted by dhruva at 9:27 AM on September 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

Wow, they are just so lovely, I could totally work with this.
posted by nenequesadilla at 8:41 PM on October 1, 2018