How long does your average spiderweb last? Or, maybe I should break this into two questions:
Under normal circumstances, with wind, rain, other animals, and that sort of thing, how long will the average spiderweb, once constructed, stay up?
Under hypothetical circumstances, where there are no outside factors such as weather or other disturbances, how long will the average spiderweb stay up?
I’m just curious because the spiders are pretty out of control in our yard, but yet I know that from day to day the spiderwebs seem like they’re always in different places. Do the spiders rebuild these things on a daily basis or am I just unobservant, or what? It seems like a lot of effort goes into one of those things, just to rebuild it a day later.
In a friendly environment (such as the corners of the ceiling in my mom’s living room), a single web can stay active for months at a time, though I’m not sure how much routine maintenance the spider was doing. In an unfriendly environment, though… I imagine that the webs you find, you’re finding by accidentally walking into them? Of course those would need to be rebuilt.
No, no, I was excluding the ones I walk through from the count. I can usually see several of the webs in the front yard, just because there’s dew on them, or the sun is hitting them just right, or whatever. Months, eh? Interesting. I wonder if the neighborhood cats have anything to do with the high turnover in the yard.
I think the spiderwebs that last a long time are called “Cobwebs”. These webs are usually found in scary houses up in the attics or down in the basements. Webs can last long times without disturbances.
Right now I am caring for a large black and yellow Gardner Spider. Her web started out next to my front door, but the next morning her web was gone, I thought she was dead, but it turns out her web was moved. Now she is under a light on the side of another building. She does not catch much where she is, so I feed her sometimes.
I once cleaned up my house I lived in in college with my roommate and his best friend’s help.
I put an old pillowcase on a broom and asked the friend to sweep down the cobwebs in the upper corners of some rooms. He then asked the speculative question: were cobwebs called that because they resembled spider webs.
I illuminated his mind when I informed him that cobwebs were just dirty spider webs.
Well, interesting info anyway. I was reading the Seattle Times this morning, and it just so happens they had a feature story about the overabundance of spiders in this area every fall. Relevant quote:
Cool! It EATS the old one! You learn something new every day, I swear.
