LONDON – Nope, it's not a screenshot from some giant tarantula-inspired horror film. Last week actual, real-life insects turned a roundabout in Croydon into one humongous silk web.
The pictures were snapped on Therapia Lane by Jaco Zietsman, who works in the area.
Therapia lane infested with ermine moth caterpillars & creepy spiders @CroydonAd @BritishMoths @CroydonGuardian pic.twitter.com/YedmF2Tq8m— Jaco Zietsman (@alotofbul) August 4, 2015
"It's been there for just over a week," Zietsman wrote in a tweet. "Spiders moved in and taking advantage of the webs [sic]."
The Croydon Advertiser subsequently reported that caterpillars were behind the incident, citing an old Daily Mail article that reported on a similarly humongous web that appeared in London back in 2012.
The Mail's piece brought in the opinion of National Trust ecologist Matthew Oates, who explained that Ermine Moth caterpillars spin large webs across shrubbery in order to protect themselves from predators.
To try and find out for sure if caterpillars were behind this recent web, Mashable sent the photos to the Surrey branch of the UK's Butterfly Conservation organisation, where they seemed to cause a bit of discussion.
Katie Callaghan of the Butterfly Conservation forwarded on the photos to her colleague Dr. Zoë Randle, who said it would be "almost impossible to ID the exact type of moth" without close-ups of the caterpillars on the web.
"Mention was given to the Ermine moth, but again there are a couple of different types and it could be either," Callaghan wrote.
"There are several Ermine species that spin webs like this," Randle confirmed in a follow-up email, before referring Mashable to the County Moth Recorder for Surrey for more information.
Mashable contacted the County Moth Recorder with questions about the species and why exactly it spins these gigantic webs. We will update this piece if we receive a response.