WATCH: World’s largest spider web with 110,000+ spiders discovered

Researchers estimate the web shelters about 111,000 spiders living together in a vast, silken colony that looks like something out of a science-fiction movie. Surprisingly, it was built by two spider species that usually live alone.

"They say it's the size of one and a half tennis courts," reports Barbara Friedman, Digital Editor for Primedia Plus.

According to a study published on 17 October in Subterranean Biology, the 'extraordinary' structure occupies 106 square meters along the wall of a narrow, low-ceilinged passage near the cave entrance. The web is made up of thousands of funnel-shaped sections woven together.

In this unusual, sulfur-rich habitat, the spiders appear to have developed a rare cooperative lifestyle, feeding on swarms of midges that thrive on the cave’s microbial life.

Because of its intricate layersand vast size, researchers have dubbed it 'the real-life World Wide Web'.

Lead author István Urák, an associate professor of biology at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania in Romania, said this marks the first recorded case of colonial behaviour in these two common spider species and likely the largest spider web ever found.