"Joro Spiders"

[darkness975]

Here we go with the sensationalism and hysteria.

8cm spiders infest US state of Georgia as resident says 'nobody wants to get a face full of web'

The Joro spider, native to East Asia, spins webs 10ft deep (three metres), with some residents finding hundreds on their properties.

www.google.com

 

[SilentWidowMaker]

Those look cool, I live in the northwest so unfortunately I can't see them. Sounds like they capture some of the pests over there in Georgia so I don't understand what the problem is. I just think sometimes people forget that spiders were around way before we were.

 

[DomGom TheFather]

Heard about that.
They're beautiful.
I don't see the problem. Lol

 

[Jumbie Spider]

I love how instead of citing the type of damage it's doing to the ecology, they instead cite how annoying it is for the entomologist to potentially get webbing on his face when walking outside.
They wouldn't be there if there wasn't a food source, so maybe that entomologist is biased with the types of bugs he prefers around his house (theoretical).

 

[The Snark]

People's attitudes are so markedly different where those spiders are native. There are, or were until latros and loxos recently invaded, no hazardous spiders in S.E. Asia. Most people completely ignore them. I'm an oddiity in that I love to stop and check the spiders out which the local rural people just consider part of the scenery. The visiting city folks get a bit of a fright sometimes but acting like an idiot in public as in going freak out or attacking the spiders or webs is a strict social no no.

 

[birdonfire]

They're cool, but I don't care for the competition they will bring to a landscape continuing to fragment.

 

[The Snark]

They're cool, but I don't care for the competition they will bring to a landscape continuing to fragment.

That would be competition for available food in an environment where wholesale use of pesticides is the norm and most major problem, then pollution, then humans invading the wilderness habitats and the big orb weavers the easiest targets for when they act like a-holes and the wilderness is their playground and on down to running out of insects. Over 15 years of living in recovering or not recovering rain forest area. I've noticed the big orb weavers are the first to become scarce.
When we first moved here I could go out and spot a neph just about every day. Then a population explosion of humans, gas powered backpack pesticide sprayers became common, and now I'm lucky to spot two or three nephs each season. Smaller orb weavers are still reasonably common though, able to tolerate close proximity with humans far better.