Life imitates apocalyptic John Wyndham novel:

[zotz]

We've all read John Wyndham (Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris)'s novel "Web", haven't we? No? Well, it's about the discovery of a species of social spider, and the consequences, which aren't too pleasant.

Nervous yet?

Naa, me neither. Honest.

Comments

[lovelyoliver]

Jesus fuck. That scares the shit out of me. I can barely manage to tie my own shoelace and spiders are hunting in packs now. All hail our new insect overlords.

[fizzyboot]

You'd better not call them insects where they can hear you, they really don't like that. Arachnids can be quite touchy no that point.

[purplerabbits]

A bit like apes when you call them monkeys?

[fizzyboot]

Yes

[robinbloke]

Damn, I remember that book - we should act now and agent orange everything within 50 miles of the little sods.

[steer]

Never read the book I'm afraid.

Irksomely the article doesn't mention whether they're genuinely a eusocial species or just an species of spider which cooperate and have size difference between the sexes. I'm presuming from "Most colonies were just a few dozen spiders, but occasionally a colony population would soar into the thousands, declining to multiple small colonies again within days" that they're not a genuine eusocial animal.

[zotz]

It is said elsewhere that they're quasisocial rather than eusocial.

[steer]

Thanks -- still very interesting though.

[zotz]

Mm. Having said that, though, they said that the presence of different sizes of female possibly indicated the development of a caste system, which if they're right and it happened would promote them to semisocial or eusocial.

[scratchmeharder]

Hmm, I need to read more John Wyndham :)

[zotz]

Quite a short novel. It wasn't published until about ten years after his death, though, so it's not as well-known as some.