‘Enchanted Forest’ Near Jerusalem Spawns Spider Explosion
On the banks of a creek near Jerusalem stands an enchanted forest, its trees shrouded by giant cobwebs woven by long-jawed spiders.
Science and nature combined to create the unusual sight: the Soreq creek largely contains treated sewage full of nutrients that promote the proliferation of mosquitoes that serve as a source of food for spiders, which then reproduce in multitudes.
“It’s an exceptional case,” said arachnophile Igor Armicach, a doctoral student at Hebrew University’s Arachnid Collection.
He said millions of long-jawed spiders created the webbing that envelops the forest, a phenomenon rarely seen in the Middle East.
But while spider egg sacs and spiderlings are everywhere along the banks of the creek, the future is bleak. Colder temperatures will soon cause a drastic drop in the mosquito population that sustains the web-weavers.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO