Peter Reynolds

This is an amazing photograph.  I’m not claiming any great skill, it was just a smartphone point-and-click but the story behind it is extraordinary.

It looks like a cold winter’s day with frost glistening across the fields, doesn’t it?  In fact, it was muggy and warm and what looks like frost is actually reflections from a heavy dew lying on spider webs at the head of every dead thistle and nettle.  Look closely and you can see there are spider webs all over the grass as well.  That’s all across this 15 acre field – and the next one and the one to the west, the east, north and south.  If I turn around I can see right across the Dorset plain up towards Yeovil and there are spider webs covering every square inch of every field and every hedgerow.

If we could work out the rate at which spiders weave their webs, so many inches per hour, we could probably calculate how many spiders there are per acre and how many spiders per square mile.

How many spiders are there in the world?  The only remaining question is would that number be more or less than a gazillion?