An Unexpected Web Over a New Zealand Soccer Field

Tracy Mathis, a resident of the city of Papamoa in New Zealand, discovered something unusual while walking in the local park three days ago: the soccer field was covered with a thin, silky layer. Spiders had woven a blanket over the grass, stretching thirty meters long and about two and a half meters wide. Initially, Mathis thought these web networks were uninhabited, but when she got closer, she saw small black creatures scurrying across them: spiders.

"When I saw them up close, I screamed," she admitted in an interview with the local newspaper, 'New Zealand Herald'.

How does such a giant web form? Not only does it require thousands of diligent spiders, but typically entire blankets of spider webs are made not just from one type of thread but from several types, each with its own distinct properties.

By the way, not all New Zealand spiders are the tiny kind we know: some grow to the size of a human hand and can produce a meter-wide web on their own. However, according to Mathis' description, it seems that the blanket on the soccer field was woven together by smaller spiders.

Mathis hurried to photograph and videotape the extraordinary blanket, providing us with evidence of what she saw that morning. This rare phenomenon did not last long: a dog that passed through the soccer field soon destroyed a large part of the giant web, and a thunderstorm eradicated the rest of it.