Sydney area is also the home of the funnel-web spider, a rather venomous and very aggressive spider. I'm not afraid of spiders but that one makes my neck-hairs rise.
"grizzly story" the standards of writing have fallen quite a bit for people who are supposed to be writers.
Cute wolf spiders, like Pardosa sp. that is the key terrestrial predator in arctic areas. More biomass than all polar bears and wolves combined and more influential than those for the ecosystem.
Odd to describe a survival instinct as "crazy".
Humans continuing on a path towards climate catastrophe when we know better, that's crazy.
After the plague of mice, the flooding, and now the spider infestation..I would just move back to Wales at this point.
Between the mice and this, I’m starting to think Australia just doesn’t want visitors anymore.
So whats going on that first photo (after the video)? I see a bunch of spiders and a much larger cricket. Either those spiders are micro tiny or that cricket is some kind of super giant beast of an insect.
So last year California followed Australia with the wildfires. This year should we be preparing for this?
Oh my, I would completely freak out if my home was overrun by spiders. There is a vibrating spider living in my bedroom, and I already get slightly nervous whenever it moves away from its regular spot.
I want to feel sorry for them and really I do, but seeing past the total shudder-worthy response I have to spiders (particularly large groups of them) is really hard...
How do the spiders know about the flood? It's probably very hard to see from their level. Do they detect vibrations or humidity?
IIRC I was just reading about an explosion of mice populations in Australia...
> When floods did kill off mice, it usually happened quickly. “Farmers talk about the mice disappearing virtually overnight,” the research officer said. “They get to such high numbers they become quite stressed … they start to run out of food, which facilitates the spread of disease, they start eating the sick ones, they turn on the babies, and then it’s all over. It’s quite a grizzly story.”
The lasting question of our time: how do we humans ensure we don't end up like the mice...
I'm reminded of Yuval Harari's quote that civilization is 3 meals away from barbarism.