{"id":185827,"date":"2025-12-15T13:42:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T13:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/185827\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T13:42:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T13:42:08","slug":"it-stretches-106-square-metres-and-spans-two-countries-and-is-home-to-over-one-hundred-thousand-scuttling-residents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/185827\/","title":{"rendered":"It stretches 106 square metres and spans two countries \u2013 and is home to over one hundred thousand scuttling residents"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arachnophobes look away \u2013 as scientists have discovered the biggest spider\u2019s web in the world. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The web, which was found near the entrance of Sulfur Cave (a sulphuric cave ecosystem) on the Albania-Greece border, stretches across 106 square meters.<\/p>\n

A group of cavers from the Czech Speleological Society first discovered the web in 2022. Further analysis was carried out by an international team of scientists, with their findings published in the journal Subterranean Biology<\/a> in October 2025.<\/p>\n

They discovered that the web is actually made up of two species of spider: around 69,000 domestic house spiders (also known as the barn funnel weaver) and 42,000 Prinerigone vagans (a species of sheet weaver spider).<\/p>\n

A web woven by multiple species of spider has never been documented before \u2013 and the barn funnel weaver would usually prey on smaller spiders like the sheet weaver spider, making the web particularly unusual. <\/p>\n

\"BarnA female barn funnel weaver next to a funnel shaped hole in the spider web. Credit: Ur\u00e1k I et al.<\/p>\n

However, scientists believe that the lack of light and an abundant food supply of tiny midges in the cave has resulted in the spiders\u2019 unique habitat.<\/p>\n

Samples of the spiders also confirmed that their populations in Sulfur Cave were genetically distinct from other populations \u2013 suggesting that these had adapted to the environment.<\/p>\n

Top image: a side view of the spider’s web. Credit: Marek Audy, featured in\u00a0Ur\u00e1k I et al. (2025) An extraordinary colonial spider community in Sulfur Cave (Albania\/Greece) sustained by chemoautotrophy. <\/a>Subterranean Biology 53: 155-177.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arachnophobes look away \u2013 as scientists have discovered the biggest spider\u2019s web in the world. \u00a0 The web,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":{"0":"post-185827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}