They craft and create webs every day, but the spiders in Tauranga, on New Zealand's North Island, probably weren't expecting to go viral on a web of a different kind, the interweb.
SunLive in Tauranga on Sunday broke the story of thousands of spiders quietly engaged in creating a web that spanned part of the Gordon Spratt Reserve in the suburb of Papamoa.
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Monster spider web
A mass exodus of spiders following flooding creates a spectacular giant web in New Zealand.
SunLive reader Tracey Maris went down to the reserve on Sunday because she saw something shimmering on the hill, and says she's never seen anything like it.
"The new tsunami evacuation hill was gleaming this afternoon so I went to see what it was.
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"To my surprise the entire mound was covered in spider web, with thousands of baby spiders."
She took some photos and started filming the phenomenon.
"The web started at the top of the mound, which is up above the soccer fields. It went almost right down to Papamoa College, so maybe nearly 30 metres."
She said she walked inside it accidentally, and it was "so sticky".
"I read an article about the same kind of thing a few years back where a whole heap of spiders created the same effect to escape flooding - but that was way up north somewhere."
It's likely the spiders were responding to the recent flooding in the district.
The same thing happened in Wagga Wagga, Australia, in 2012, after it experienced flooding.
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