Thursday, March 31, 2011

A Plague of Spiders?

Trees cocooned in spiders webs after flooding in Sindh, Pakistan

An unexpected side-effect of the flooding in parts of Pakistan has been that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising flood waters.

Because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water has taken so long to recede, many trees have become cocooned in spiders webs. People in this part of Sindh have never seen this phenomenon before - but they also report that there are now less mosquitoes than they would expect, given the amount of stagnant, standing water that is around.

It is thought that the mosquitoes are getting caught in the webs and may be reducing the risk of malaria, which would be one blessing for the people of Sindh, facing so many other hardships after the floods.
 Go look at the pictures, really.

 This image is posted under a Creative Commons - Attribution Licence, in accordance with the Open Government Licence. You are free to embed, download or otherwise re-use it, as long as you credit the source as 'Department for International Development'.

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