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This sure isn’t Halloween decor.
While exploring a trail in Springfield recently, a Missouri Department of Conservation worker came upon a stupendous spiderweb and took a photo. After posting the image to the MDC’s social media, viewers were highly impressed by the natural creation — and quite alarmed by its horror factor — with the pic racking up over 550 comments and 3,000 reactions.
“MDC Media Specialist Francis Skalicky snapped a pic of the orb-weaver’s spiderweb while out on a trail in Springfield recently,” the department writes, noting that a number of orb-weaver species live in Missouri. Their webs become most noticeable in the late summer and fall, when the adult spiders become their largest.
“This one is a bit bigger than a dinner plate,” the caption continues. The angle the photo was taken at, and the intricate web’s location between two trees, however, make it appear significantly bigger.
While the web is impressive, it is not unique for orb-weaver spiders, which frequently weave large webs despite usually growing to only about a half-inch, not including their legs. Still, commenters bugged out about it.
“I’d freak out seeing this, knowing there is a spider the size of my hand nearby *shudders*,” wrote one arachnophobe on the post.
“Gorgeous piece from an architect of nature … until you run into it!” wrote another. One commenter joked that it’s “the kind that literally ‘catch’ people if they walk through them at night.”
Others chimed in with various versions of “Hell no,” and to call the spider an “overachiever.”
In addition to weaving its “lace doily”-like web, as one commenter put it, the spiders also control populations of flying insects, according to an information page about spotted orb-weavers on the MDC’s website. Despite the large size of the eerily stunning webs, the spiders are actually quite delicate creatures vulnerable to predation. All adult spotted orb-weavers are usually killed in the first freeze of the year, with only the species’ unborn eggs making it through the winter.
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