262 - This Land Is Not Our Land



The twin islands of Cres and Losinj are thinly populated. There are some tourist centers like Mali Losinj, but for wide stretches there is nothing but Macchia, walls, some sheep in between … and spiders. Spiders just like this one. They look very much like normal spiders in our garden, but in comparison they are big. Very big.

Their body is big like a hazelnut. This is not big by absolute measures, but for spiders like that in our garden it is very, VERY big.

Let’s look at it from another angle. The island of Cres has a size of approximately 400 square kilometers, that’s 400 million square meters. I have made only two forays into the macchia, but both times I have found these spiders. Many of them. I’d suppose a density of one spider per four square meters. And now go figure.

This means 100.000.000 spiders on an island with a human population of 3184!!!

This land is not our land. It is spider territory.

I have the Song of the Day on this 42 disc collection called “The Ultimate Jazz Archive”. It’s the Rhythmakers in 1932 with “Spider Crawl”. Sorry, no lyrics on the net.


There are 2 comments

pnfphotography   (2007-07-04)

That is ALLOT of spiders... we have them too but hopefully not that many! Welcome back from your travels and as always your image of the day is awesome.

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Thomas   (2007-07-04)

Oh, I doubt that the relationship between the human population and any invertebrate (spiders, insects, worms, etc) is different in any other place... It's time to face it: we're just one of many - and maybe not even the most important one.

Thomas

PS.: Sorry, I'm a biologist, so I couldn't help it... ;-)

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