Not Politics (Orb Weaver Mix)

The scientists described their estimate of 35,176 spiders/m³ as “markedly conservative” and “representing a minimum volume” of spiders, by the way.

Question: do you measure spiders in Metric ShitTons? Or in Imperial ShitLoads?

Either way, it’s an awful lot of spiders.

―Gwen Pearson

It is, actually, difficult to admit just how it is that spiders affect so many of us so irrationally. And it offers no useful comfort to point to the next person and note that they’re even worse about it. Then again, four acres of orb spinners just waiting for some unfortunate organism to blunder into their trap, amounting to a population estimated somewhere above one hundred seven million spiders, and a “markedly conservative” estimate of maximum population density at 35,176 spiders/m³.

Come on. Admit it. You’d be just as bad about it as the next person.

The 2010 technical paper is available, for those so inclined, either through Pearson’s blog for Wired.com, or in our own archives.

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Pearson, Gwen. “4-Acre Spider Web Engulfs Building”. Charismatic Minifauna. 31 October 2014.

Greene, Albert et al. “An Immense Concentration of Orb-Weaving Spiders With Communal Webbing in a Man-Made Structural Habitat (Arachnida: Araneae: Tetragnathidae, Araneidae)”. American Entomologist, 56 (3). 2010.

A Preface for the Ages

“I’m not an expert on moose sex or moose anything, but I think the understanding is that if they can preserve the corridor with things like this, then I think there’s a good chance the Nova Scotia population will be replenished.”

—Derek Burney

How often does one get to start a sentence with, “I’m not an expert on moose sex”?

And the accompanying news story actually isn’t nearly as ridiculous as the question suggests.