Spiderverse Synergy
Mother Nature's Dark Web
Mother Nature never ceases to amaze. Thanks to her, thousands of fireflies in Southeast Asia throw full-on bioluminescent raves, flashing in perfect unison until the rainforest looks like Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
Then there’s the aquatic Benjamin Button — a jellyfish that can revert its cells back to infancy and basically reboot itself like a glitchy MacBook.
But her latest shock-and-awe performance? She somehow convinced two rival spider species to live in harmony — and build the world’s largest communal web.
Scientists recently discovered 111,000 spiders living side-by-side inside a web spanning 1,100 square feet. To put that into perspective: imagine your college-aged boomerang kid’s one-bedroom apartment… then cover every inch of it — floor to ceiling — with spiders. Just typing that made my skin attempt a jailbreak.
What makes this truly wild is that the two species — Tegenaria domestica and Prinerigone vagans — are like the Hatfields and McCoys. Under normal circumstances, the T. Doms would devour the P. V.s faster than Thanksgiving leftovers. But deep inside a pitch-black, sulfur-rich cave, scientists believe the darkness acted like a natural peace treaty. When you can’t see your rivals, you can’t eat your rivals.
So, Mother Nature essentially launched the ultimate D&I initiative. She got two feuding species to share one habitat using zero PowerPoints.
Too bad she’s not available for corporate consulting.
Combative Collaboration
The Spiderverse nightmare is enough to give any arachnophobe heart palpitations, but the story actually delivers a surprising shot of perspective: If two natural enemies can share a web, surely we humans can share a workspace.
At some point in your career, you’ll be asked to collaborate with someone who short-circuits your patience. That’s normal. Because here’s the truth they don’t put in onboarding materials:
You don’t have to like everyone you work with — but working with them beats working against them.
The next time a colleague rubs you the wrong way, try these ideas:
Look for the Pattern, Not the Personality
Before you label someone “annoying” or “abrasive,” ask:
Are they interrupting because they’re anxious?
Over-explaining because they’re desperate to seem competent?
Nitpicking because they’re terrified of being wrong?
Patterns humanize people. Villains don’t.
When you shift from “they’re impossible” to “here’s why they show up this way,” collaboration feels less like combat and more like… well, spiders in a cave. Still unpleasant, but surprisingly functional.
Find One Shared Goal
If every conversation feels like Peter Parker fighting Mister Negative, pause and ask:
“What’s the one thing we’re both trying to achieve?”
That shared goal becomes your neutral ground — the cave-darkness equivalent — where tension quiets enough for progress to happen.
Zoom Out to Refocus
If repeated attempts leave you feeling like the Black Tarantula just wrapped you in a frustration cocoon, step back and ask:
“In 30 days, will this still matter?”
If the answer is no, you’re not battling a crisis — you’re battling your own ego. And egos, unlike spiders, don’t need feeding.
If 111,000 spiders can put aside lifelong beef and build something massive together, we can probably survive a project with the coworker who breathes too loudly on Zoom.
Maybe the trick to working better with people isn’t changing them… but changing what we pay attention to.
