The Giant Spider Web at Lake Tawakoni
Posted on October 1, 2007
There is a giant spider web at Lake Tawakoni State Park in Texas. The web was found in August by Texas Parks & Wildlife employee Freddie Gowin while mowing the trails at Lake Tawakoni State Park. The web sparked interest from experts and bloggers when Donna Garde, Lake Tawakoni State Park Superintendent, posted her photo of the web.
Wired says that thousands of spiders from 12 different species have built the web that reaches 200 yards. It took about a month for the enormous web to be built. Wired says, "...entomologists say that bountiful insect hatches caused by heavy rainfall have provided so much food that the spiders instinctively repressed their traditional enmities in favor of cooperation."
In the movie Arachnophobia a new species of spiders was discovered in South America that operates more like organized army ants and killer bees than solitary spiders. Fortunately, these Lake Tawakoni spiders are neither poisonous or very scary.
A great timeline of the social spider web can be found here and a list of the spiders collected on the giant web can be found here.
Here is a video of the web from Texas Parks and Wildlife:
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