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eppur_se_muova

(40,701 posts)
Sun Dec 7, 2025, 05:05 PM Sunday

World's biggest spiderweb discovered inside 'Sulfur Cave' with 111,000 arachnids living in pitch black

By Sascha Pare published November 4, 2025

A giant colonial spiderweb in a sulfuric cave on the border between Greece and Albania may be the largest ever found — and it was built by spiders we didn't know liked the company of others.

Researchers have discovered more than 111,000 spiders thriving in what appears to be the world's biggest spiderweb, deep inside a pitch-black cave on the Albanian-Greek border.

The "extraordinary" colony consists of a colossal web in a permanently dark zone of the cavern, according to a study published Oct. 17 in the journal Subterranean Biology. The web stretches 1,140 square feet (106 square meters) along the wall of a narrow, low-ceilinged passage near the entrance of the cave. It is a patchwork of thousands of individual, funnel-shaped webs, the researchers noted.

This is the first evidence of colonial behavior in two common spider species and likely represents the largest spiderweb in the world, said study lead author István Urák, an associate professor of biology at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania in Romania.
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more: https://www.livescience.com/animals/spiders/worlds-biggest-spiderweb-discovered-inside-sulfur-cave-with-111-000-arachnids-living-in-pitch-black



Sounds like a nice place to visit on your next vacation -- just don't let that candle go out.

Why does the connection to Transylvania not surprise me ?

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World's biggest spiderweb discovered inside 'Sulfur Cave' with 111,000 arachnids living in pitch black (Original Post) eppur_se_muova Sunday OP
Sounds like republican voters to me Bread and Circuses Sunday #1
How the heck did they come up with 111,000?? lastlib Monday #2
LOL, I was just now wondering about that ! eppur_se_muova Monday #3
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