After getting washed out by last year’s devastating floods in Pakistan, millions of spiders have been building new homes in thousands of trees throughout the country. Gizmodo explains that the influx of water that affected more people than the Boxing Day Indian Ocean tsunami, the Pakistani earthquake, the Haiti earthquake, and Hurricane Katrina combined also displaced the country’s arachnoid residents. In response to the prevailing dampness, and as though mandated by the arachnid intelligence council, millions of spiders have been spinning new webs above ground. Albeit kind of spooky and maybe not so great for the trees, this adaptation has been a boon to public health because of all the mosquitoes caught by the natural nets.
Much of the floodwaters that engulfed one fifth of Pakistan’s 307,374 mile territory has yet to properly recede. A mosquito’s wet dream, the pools of stagnant water are expected by public health officials to increase this year’s incidents of malaria. But the webbed trees are trapping the malaria-carrying pests in droves, according to the United Kingdom’s Department of International Development, and malaria cases have actually gone down.
Via Gizmodo, DFID
