Try living in Australia.we have some of the Biggest and deadlient spiders in the world.
The funnel web is Australia’s deadliest spider and we have heaps of them where i live and im over 200kms from Sydney.
Huntsman spiders are the main spiders down here.They can grow up to the size of a dinner plate and like to get inside your house.Had one fucker crawl on my head when i was asleep one night.The feeling of a hairy spider crawling on your face when u are half asleep is one i will not forget.
One word of advice.Dont visit Australia in the summer as u will see spiders and snakes EVERYWHERE! that is unless u visit big city like Sydney.
[quote]BigRagoo wrote:
SkyzykS wrote:
No, the ones I run in to are realy sturdy looking, shorter legs, and more hairy.
Usualy under loose bark and logs, they dart back into small holes and recesses.
Ambush type of predators from what I can tell.
Hmmm…from that description, it may be wolf spiders, or borrowing spiders. I see many spiders that make funnel like webs (not the Australian funnel web spider) that get pretty big, look sturdy, and have a hairy abdomens. But without a pic, I can’t be sure.
Here’s a typical specie of wolf spider. Does it look like that?[/quote]
Thats the one!
Spooky looking little suckers, and fast too. Sometimes if you expose them, they’ll freeze, and assume a defensive posture like that picture of the Australian funnel web.
[quote]supermick wrote:
Interesting stuff. I remember wathing a series about a British spider hunter after south american ‘chicken’ spiders. Basically a kind of tarantula that was so big, it was said to pray on local chickens. Unfortunately he only found a 9" diameter cretin, but i was hooked on that 30 minute programme.
Obviously chicken spider was not the scientific name but it was a burrowing spider.[/quote]
This got me Googling for chicken spiders, which lead me to this interesting tidbit: the biggest spider known is the Goliath spider, which can be up to a foot across (I believe it eats birds).
I then found this picture.
It’s not every day that a picture of a spider is smaller than the reality. I mean, that spider must be bigger than some of those accessory dogs.
I’ve lived in the Northeast (New York State) pretty much all my life, and I’m pretty sure that black widows don’t exist up here. I’ve done plenty of hiking, camping and other outdoorsey stuff in the Adirondacks, etc., but I never even heard mention of a black widow in this region.
I think brown recluses do exist here, though they’re rare (I’ve never seen one but I know someone who got bitten by what was likely a brown recluse). But I don’t believe we have black widows at all.
[quote]BigRagoo wrote:
stumpy wrote:
Yet another reason why living in the north is a good thing.
Don’t be so complacent. You can find one if you look ;)[/quote]
It looked something like this, at least, the leg patterns were the same. The body and thorax were yellow too, but I swear there was some red and blue in the 1 1/2 second it took me to realize there was a big wankin spider on my leg. I might have been seeing things about it that werent really there, bieng in panic and all…
The guy told me these spiders make webs that span tree to tree, not just branch to branch like other spiders. Birds have been known to get tangled in these webs as their silk is incredibly resiliant. So this picture inst really the spider I think I saw, but it looks damn close. The thing was way huge too, like over an inch.
Spiders have always freaked me out, I have no problem with snakes and other creepies, but spiders forget it.
I have three spide related stories.
When I was working construction I smacked a large spider with my hammer. The resulting splatter shot in my eye, causing it to swell shut for two days. This earned me the name “Spider Man” for the rest of the job.
Once, against my better judgement, I watched the movie archnaphobia.
In the middle of the night, I had a very vivid nightmare of being attacked by the mother spider. I went into attack mode yelling “Mother Spider” and backhanding my sleeping wife across the chest full force.
That was the end of sleep for me that night, as I found that spiders were the least of my worries.
As I was packing up my gear to hike out from a weekend backpacking, I noticed a very pecular looking spider scurrying across my tent floor. Not having learned anything from the hammer incident the, I smacked it with a dust pan.
Well, I found out why it looked so odd, it’s abdomen was covered with tiny replica’s of itself. After I smacked it, what seemed like hundreds of them went scurrying everywhere, just like that scene in Little Nickey. This gave me the heebie jeebies knowing that I had slept with them all weekend.
[quote]BigRagoo wrote:
stumpy wrote:
Yet another reason why living in the north is a good thing.
Don’t be so complacent. You can find one if you look ;)[/quote]
Thing is I DON’T want to find one of those nasty fuckers. 6 months of below freezing weather a year is good for keeping most of the creepy crawly’s a long way away.
[quote]BigRagoo wrote:
supermick wrote:
Interesting stuff. I remember wathing a series about a British spider hunter after south american ‘chicken’ spiders. Basically a kind of tarantula that was so big, it was said to pray on local chickens. Unfortunately he only found a 9" diameter cretin, but i was hooked on that 30 minute programme.
Obviously chicken spider was not the scientific name but it was a burrowing spider.
There are tarntulas in the Amazon that are big enough to eat small birds. Their leg span can be bigger than a dinner plate, with fangs at an inch long.
[/quote]
This is the best reason I’ve seen yet for demolishing those damn rain forests.
The only memory I have of spiders is when my dad caught one back when I was a kid. He put the thing in one of those old rectangular ice-cream tubs, and the damn thing blocked out almost all the light when looking at it from underneath. It was big.
[quote]BluePfaltz wrote:
It looked something like this, at least, the leg patterns were the same. The body and thorax were yellow too, but I swear there was some red and blue in the 1 1/2 second it took me to realize there was a big wankin spider on my leg. I might have been seeing things about it that werent really there, bieng in panic and all…
The guy told me these spiders make webs that span tree to tree, not just branch to branch like other spiders. Birds have been known to get tangled in these webs as their silk is incredibly resiliant. So this picture inst really the spider I think I saw, but it looks damn close. The thing was way huge too, like over an inch.[/quote]
That’s a calico nephila, Nephila clavipes. The make huge amber/yellow collor webs spanning between trees that are 5-8 feet apart. The webs are very strong and have been able to capture a hummingbird (I rescued one from a web one morning). They aren’t deadly to humans…just scary looking.
[quote]Testy1 wrote:
3) As I was packing up my gear to hike out from a weekend backpacking, I noticed a very pecular looking spider scurrying across my tent floor. Not having learned anything from the hammer incident the, I smacked it with a dust pan.
Well, I found out why it looked so odd, it’s abdomen was covered with tiny replica’s of itself. After I smacked it, what seemed like hundreds of them went scurrying everywhere, just like that scene in Little Nickey. This gave me the heebie jeebies knowing that I had slept with them all weekend.
[quote]stumpy wrote:
BigRagoo wrote:
stumpy wrote:
Yet another reason why living in the north is a good thing.
Don’t be so complacent. You can find one if you look
Thing is I DON’T want to find one of those nasty fuckers. 6 months of below freezing weather a year is good for keeping most of the creepy crawly’s a long way away.
[/quote]
I saw what I later learned was a wolf spider at our cabin once. I thought it was a mouse, but then I remembered mice don’t have 8 big, long, hairy legs. Don’t worry, killed it with a piece of fire wood. No way in hell I was going to sleep with some big ass spider walking around.
[quote]analog_kid wrote:
Don’t worry, killed it with a piece of fire wood. No way in hell I was going to sleep with some big ass spider walking around.
[quote]BigRagoo wrote:
Wayland wrote:
a picture of the infamous clock spider is needed i feel
Hahaha, that’s a huge bastard behind that clock. Probably a huntsman.
Who’s wife wouldn’t let out a blood curddling scream if she found that?[/quote]
Are you kidding me? My wife??? I would scream like a little girl if I came across that mother in my house. I think I would take my 10 lb sledgehammer from the garage and just pound the hell out of the clock and spider underneath it.
[quote]analog_kid wrote:
stumpy wrote:
BigRagoo wrote:
stumpy wrote:
Yet another reason why living in the north is a good thing.
Don’t be so complacent. You can find one if you look
Thing is I DON’T want to find one of those nasty fuckers. 6 months of below freezing weather a year is good for keeping most of the creepy crawly’s a long way away.
I saw what I later learned was a wolf spider at our cabin once. I thought it was a mouse, but then I remembered mice don’t have 8 big, long, hairy legs. Don’t worry, killed it with a piece of fire wood. No way in hell I was going to sleep with some big ass spider walking around.
