Talking about spiders, there’s this new discovery:
The arachnid measures over 8 centimeters from foot to foot and has dark hair. The most impressive feature of the “megaspider” might be its fangs. The spider wields fangs that measure almost an inch long, and they reportedly have the ability to pierce a person’s fingernail.
Key word: Australia.
I wonder what the spider venom milking job pays.
That’s like 3 inches.. not too impressive. They must be confused by the metric system.
Funnel web spiders don’t have to be big to be deadly. Quote:
Early symptoms of a funnel-web spider envenomation include facial paresthesias, nausea, vomiting, profuse diaphoresis, drooling, and shortness of breath. Patients may become agitated, confused and ultimately comatose. This is associated with hypertension, metabolic acidosis, dilated pupils, muscle twitching and pulmonary and cerebral edema. Death results from pulmonary edema or progression to hypotension and circulatory collapse.[7]
My baseline assumption w/ regard to EVERYTHING in Australia is that it will kill you. Painfully.
Even if it can’t kill you, it probably wants to.
The day we moved into our home in PA my wife found the biggest spider I’d ever seen outside of a zoo in our basement, probably nearly the size of the subject of this article. My brother-in-law caught it with a cup and piece of cardboard and put it outside. Looking it up, it was a Wolf Spider, they can give a painful but not dangerous bite, but will mostly leave you alone if you don’t bother them. Oh, they don’t make webs, they actually chase their prey (hence the name wolf).
I personally don’t mind a couple spiders around the house, they eat the other things I’d rather not have around like mosquitoes (and PA has some MONSTROUS mosquitoes, you get dizzy after a couple bite you). Now if the spiders in question were venomous that would be a different story, and they’d be terminated with extreme prejudice.
Mark D
Reptile Park … I’ll bet ours is better funded.
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If i ever move to Australia remind me to invent the 10 pound sledge-swatter.
Time for Africa to step it up.
My daughter did a semester abroad in Perth. Orientation started with all the things in Australia that can kill you.
“and they reportedly have the ability to pierce a person’s fingernail.”
That’s very specific. Wonder whose fingernail fucked around and found out?
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