Change can be gradual, or it can be sudden.
Either way, we humans are usually prepared for it. We’ve seen it coming. We’ve been warned.
Our technology and mass forms of communication keep us in touch with the progress of a changing planet.
We know when a pandemic is on our doorstep. We know when the weather is changing. We know if an asteroid is hurtling towards us. We know the likelihood of conflict in faraway places. We know when new laws are being introduced and how they will affect us (good or bad).
No matter what it is, someone is always on hand to tell us.
But who tells the animals we share the planet with? Nobody. They work it out themselves.
And then they tell us. But who listens?
What of their world?
Let’s take a look at one part of their world, to them, their only world: my backyard.
This world is a green one: filled with trees, shrubs, bushes, flowers, birds, bees, bugs, lizards, frogs, butterflies, spiders and heaps of creepy-crawlies. It’s a nice world. They’re happy.
Though hot summers can be a frenzy of flying creatures: flies, beetles (including Christmas beetles), moths, mosquitos and other little creatures that sting or bite.
The Christmas beetles were the first to disappear. We haven’t seen them for about three years.
Then the flying bugs – whatever they were.
Two years ago, with the disappearance of those flying beasties, the spiders took action. Food become scarcer, so they built larger webs in order to catch whatever was flying about.
As the food grew scarcer, the webs grew bigger.
No two trees weren’t connected by a web. They stretched also across our paths – from gutter to tree. It was impossible to walk around the house and garden without walking into a web (followed by wild karate chops and strange dances from moi as I tried to shake off unseen spider).
But there was a message. The spiders were telling me they were hungry. They were also telling me that food was scarce.
This year the flying creatures are scarcer. Even the annoying flies are no longer annoying us.
But also this year the spider webs too disappeared.
What are the spiders telling us?
Their world – their environment – is changing. For the worse. So then, is ours.
2025 update: This past summer felt much like the last. No intricate webs woven between trees, and thus, no spiders to craft them. A slight uptick in flies was noticeable, though. Perhaps they’ll lure the spiders back, restarting the cycle. Or perhaps the spiders are gone for good, never to return.
They did try to worn us.
Dear reader, we need your support
Independent sites such as The AIMN provide a platform for public interest journalists. From its humble beginning in January 2013, The AIMN has grown into one of the most trusted and popular independent media organisations.
One of the reasons we have succeeded has been due to the support we receive from our readers through their financial contributions.
With increasing costs to maintain The AIMN, we need this continued support.
Your donation – large or small – to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
Another timely essay, thank you, Michael. When was it first written?
For the interested, the curious & the concerned, there is an ample supply of information derived from observation of the animal kingdoms with regard to the status quo of our home, the planet Earth.
In the general sense of things, the animal and insect world is far more sensitive to environmental changes than we humans. Numerous studies and observations attest to this.
It was observed in the hours prior to the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in northern China, that flying insects were swarming within that region, unexpectedly & from the human perspective, unusually so. The insects knew that something was amiss. Similar observations of unusual animal & insect behaviour that preceded natural disasters have been noted.
Scientists, entomologists, biologists, herpetologists and many other ‘…ologists’ have recorded dramatic plunges in populations. We all of us, all living forms, exist within a pair of brackets defined by a homeostatic range; too hot, too cold, too dry, too wet, too acidic or too alkaline etc., and we perish.
The cost of global warming is unprecedented rapid change to the earth’s physical conditions and the shifting of those brackets that define viability for life forms.
A 25-year longitudinal study of insect populations in Germany recorded a 76% drop in seasonal decline, along with an 82% mid-summer decline in flying insect biomass (2017). A Costa Rican study in a pristine rainforest recorded an 80% decline in insect populations. Needless to say, these are extremely alarming indicators.
To rephrase Martin Niemöller’s well-known quotation:
First they came for the insects, then they came for the birds and the animals, and finally, because we did nothing, they came for us as well.
Thank you, Canguro. Not too long ago, April last year by memory.
PS: One thing i take from your fascinating comment is that for those people who don’t believe the climate scientists, perhaps they should listen to the animals. Same message though.
Regarding not just spiders but almost all the planets insects makes this four part documentary well worth watching:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36415572/
A couple of years ago, at the end of January, so mid to late summer, I drove from Brisbane to Tenterfield, 266K each way . I had not driven in the country for almost 20 years and what I noticed was that when I arrived home, after my 532K drive, that I had not one squashed insect on my windscreen. I grew up in the country and remember well windscreens and grills being littered with insect bodies after on a short drive into town. Where have they all gone and how does that affect the crops that we depend on to survive.
I remember when I was a kid, when a storm was building up, hundreds of thousands of frogs started croaking. They were very loud. You knew rain was going to start very soon. Now, I rarely see or hear a frog.