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”
Something as simple as a bakery is amazing.
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.
They do hunt millipedes and then drag the corpses back to their lair to form a millipede graveyard.
What can sustain that number of spiders so far underground?
> 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!
So the whole food-chain here is: sulfur -> bacteria -> midges -> spiders.
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."
> “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.
But they do have 8 eyes, so I’m assuming they make visual confirmation. But these cave spiders are in the dark…
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.
But if the smaller spiders can fight back at all, it might well make that battle less appealing.
Or are they building a structure that's attractive for bugs to enter? What's the strategy for this web?
Over a shot of a bunch of people walking around with no masks on?
> “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.
>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.
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?
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!
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...
Nature is always several steps ahead.
That seems remarkably warm. Is that typical for cave temperatures?
>“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?
"The wider web is actually a pastiche of thousands of individual funnel-shaped webs,"
Anyone that watched Stargate Atlantis gets it.
