A town in Greece was captured covered in thousands of spiderwebs, according to footage published this week.
Giannis Giannakopoulos saw the “veil of webs” this week in Aitoliko, CNN reported.
The BBC reported that the spiderwebs are about 1,000 feet in length.
“It’s natural for this area to have insects, no one is especially worried,” he told CNN. “But I have never seen any spider webs this big in my life.”
Maria Chatzaki, an arachnologist, said that they’re always from the same type of spider in the Tetragnatha genus. “The spiders will have their party and will soon die,” she told Sky News, adding that the phenomenon takes place every few years.
“When animal finds abundant food, high temperatures and sufficient humidity, it has the ideal conditions to be able to make larger population,” she added. “This phenomenon has arisen from a population explosion of this spider.”
Greek biologist Fotis Pergantis said the spiders are trying to catch gnats.
“When these temperatures last long enough, we can see a second, third and fourth generation of the gnats and end up with large amounts of their populations,” he said, adding that the spiders will multiply en masse if there are enough gnats.
“It’s the simple prey-predator phenomenon,” Pergantis told the network. “It’s the ecosystem’s natural reactions and once the temperatures begin to drop and the gnat populations die out, the spider populations will decrease as well.”
The spiders are not a danger to humans, the report said. “These spiders are not dangerous for humans and will not cause any damage to the area’s flora,” Chatzaki told the BBC.
