Giant Wolf Spiders? Thanks Global Warming!

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Global warming, climate change, whatever the current politically correct term for it is, we’ve been hearing about the consequences for quite some time now. Melting polar ice caps leading to everything from submerged cities to mass extinctions. There have been some horrible predictions of what might happen if the world doesn’t change it’s polluting habits, but none of them prepared me for the news that national geographic just dumped in my lap. Assuming you read the title of this post correctly, you already know where I’m going with this. Some Danish scientists have spent the last decade studying a species of wolf spider (Pardosa glacialis) native to northeastern Greenland. They learned something that, at least in my overactive imagination, is deeply disturbing. They’re growing larger. As the summer season slowly extends, they are able to hunt for longer which, in turn, gives them what they need to grow bigger. The larger spiders also produce more offspring, which leads to a new generation to grow larger and produce even more offspring. Afraid of giant arachnids yet? No? Well, here’s the kicker: As if it wasn’t enough that these things are growing larger and growing in population, at the end of the ten year study, their exoskeletons had increased in thickness by about 2%. Sure doesn’t sound like a lot, but I’ve seen Arachnophobia enough times to know that this won’t end well. So, on top of all of the other things we can blame on global warming, now we can add larger, more populous, harder to squish spiders to the list.

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