Giant house spiders moving indoors after wet UK summer

[cronus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34026269

Giant house spiders moving indoors after wet UK summer



(continued, about that time of year again....)

[Brian Peacock]

Is the scale of that 8:8?

[JimC]

8 legs good, 2 legs bad...

[rainbow]

Pathetic. This is a proper African spider:



.

[JimC]

Slow, obese, has eaten too many grasshoppers...

[mistermack]

Soon to be extinct I bet.

Wait till the Chinese medicine men find a use for it.

[Calilasseia]

Want something really large? Look up Heteropoda maxima.

There's a nice German language YouTube video featuring the expedition to track it down.

[Hermit]

Pathetic. This is a proper African spider:



.

All show, no go. Baboon spiders have never killed a human being. They're just a big wimps. Explains why the photo is of someone holding this specimen in his bare hand.

The redbacks in my garden are quite small, beautiful ... and deadly.



They have not killed any humans since 1956 though, because their poison is slow acting and antivenins have been developed around that time. Their bite is still very painful, which is why you are unlikely to find a photo of anybody holding a live redback in their hand.

Then there's the funnelweb. Unlike the redback, it will actually go on the attack. The greatest number of people killed lived in Sydney, but again, nobody has suffered more than rather severe and prolonged pain since an antivenin has been developed.

I photographed this one in my garden a few years ago, but it could have been the relatively much less harmful mouse spider which looks much the same. One of my chooks swooped on it and gobbled it up. Chooks are immune to spider bites.

[Brian Peacock]

Want something really large? Look up Heteropoda maxima...

Oh My Fucking Jeeeeeeeeeezuz!!

[Xamonas Chegwé]

That is one ugly creature! Lovely spider though.

[JimC]

Shelob, where are you when we need you!

[mistermack]

Funnily enough, I instinctively find the bigger ones less scary.

Maybe it's because it's not going to be hard to find, in your bed-clothes. And it certainly won't be lurking in your trousers when you put them on.

[Calilasseia]

Actually, this is Heteropoda maxima ...



Leg span 12 inches.

That model in the other photo,looks like an early attempt to model Megarachne servinei before scientists discovered that the fossil was actually a Eurypterid. It's notable that a decent sized fossil spider has yet to be found in Carboniferous strata, despite those strata containing fossils of a wide range of other giant sized invertebrates. As well as the dragonfly ancestor Meganeura monyi, known to reach a wingspan of at least 75 cm, and potentially capable of a 1 metre wingspan in life, the Carboniferous gave us Arthropleura, a Genus of giant millipede like invertebrates that reached 2.3 metres in length, along with Hibbertopterus (a Eurypterid that reached 1.6 metres long), and Pulmonoscorpius, an ancestral scorpion that was 70 cm long.