Nature has once again revealed one of its most astonishing wonders — the discovery of what may be the world’s largest spider web, home to over 1,11,000 spiders living side by side. Reported by Times of India.
Published in the journal Subterranean Biology, the study marks the first recorded instance of colonial behaviour among two typically solitary spider species — and possibly the largest communal spider web ever documented.
The sprawling web stretches across 106 square meters along the wall of a dark, low-ceiling passage near the entrance of Sulphur Cave, located on the Albanian-Greek border.
This remarkable structure is woven from thousands of interconnected funnel-shaped webs, creating a vast living network where spiders coexist in harmony — a phenomenon rarely observed in nature.
Lead author István Urák, associate professor at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, called the discovery “a unique and fascinating example of how species can adapt and cooperate in extreme environments.”
Urák described his feelings to LiveScience on seeing the colossal web, saying, “If I tried to put into words all the emotions that overwhelmed me [when I saw the tissue], I would emphasise admiration, respect and gratitude.
You have to experience it to really understand what it’s like”. This discovery highlights the natural world’s still vast unknowns and the ecological complexity even in seemingly hidden environments.
The colony is home to two spider species, including Tegenaria domestica, commonly called the barn funnel weaver or domestic house spider, and Prinerigone vagans.
DNA analyses confirmed that Urák’s team estimated around 69,000 barn spiders and more than 42,000 dwarf weavers share this communal web.
These species were not previously known to coexist on such a scale, especially inside one vast web complex.
The spider megacity is located in Sulfur Cave, a cavern formed by sulfuric acid created when hydrogen sulfide in groundwater oxidizes.
Although these researchers were not the first ones to discover the details about the Sulfur Cave spider colony, in 2022, cavers from the Czech Speleological Society came across it during an expedition in Vromoner Canyon.
Then, in 2024, a team of scientists visited the cave and collected some spider samples from the web, which Urák analysed before leading his own expedition to Sulfur Cave.