35,176 spiders per cubic meter web US treatment plant

Baltimore Wastewater Treatment Plant had a spider problem - one that saw the plant covered in so much webbing it actually displaced the flourescent lights.

Researchers have written about the infestation in the Journal American Entomologist, describing how the plant's 35,176 orb weaver spiders per cubic meter stuffed the inside with webbing.

IFLScience reports that in some places, 95% of the available space was filled with webs.

 “In places where the plant workers had swept aside the webbing to access equipment, the silk lay piled on the floor in rope-like clumps as thick as a fire hose," the study's authors wrote.

 “The visual impact of the spectacle as nothing less than astonishing.”