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Giant Spiders (Ukraine, Peru, Cumbria & Elsewhere)

He's got crabs

Slightly off-thread:- Did anyone see that documentary on Sky Animal channel about the giant crabs in the Norwegian fiords? It was pretty funny - these divers went looking for these legendary giant grabs and one guy ended up getting attacked by one - it was actually bigger than he was! He nearly sh*t his suit!

I've heard of people getting crabs, but crabs getting people?
 
Yup, I have to say that this spider story is for the birds.

A spider cannot grow much bigger than the Bird Eating Spider as it would collapse under it own weight and it would suffocate due to lack of oxygen.

Insects, arachnids and other animals were sometimes a lot bigger in prehistory but that had to do with the temperature of the time and the way in which heat is distributed through the body.

Mind you, saying that, the garden spider outside our kitchen window is fast developing an arse the size of a orange.
He has had the genius idea to build a web in front of the window where we have the light on most of the night. The BobHowlers* he catches is making him a mighty large bugger.


*'BobHowler' is a midland term for gigantic moths.
 
Shocktopus said:
*'BobHowler' is a midland term for gigantic moths.

Only amongst those that still listen to the wireless. As a representative for midlands youth I would just like to say that I have no idea what a BobHowler is or was.
 
Then you really are missing out mate.
Spread the word, introduce the word in a conversation with some of your 'crew'. You will be the talk of the town with your new word and the people will love and follow you.

By the way, I'm thirty years old and have known about Bobhowlers for years as have a number of midlanders with whom I work, all of them younger than I.

I do like listening to the wireless unless one of those new uptempo pop combos comes on then I switch off and take my cocoa to bed.
 
tinfoilpants said:
Only amongst those that still listen to the wireless. As a representative for midlands youth I would just like to say that I have no idea what a BobHowler is or was.

Yow knows kak-all about the black country then. Where am yow from? Leicester? Droitwich? Them ain't the bloody midlands, despite being in the middle of the country.

Anyway, Shoctopus, ow big wus it? Big as a bonk-oss?
 
Twas ar!

Them am bostin' tho, ay thay? Bob'owlers. ah Cah gerrinuff of em I cah.

Tadarabit.
 
What if it isn't a spider?

What if it is a pre-historic relic in the present day?

...and don't say that that doesn't happen'cos it does. Look at the Caelocanth!

Complete the poem...

Clue: Simon Armitage...Anthology...School...GCSE work...

I am very bothered when I think of all the things I have done in my life...
 
UK Spider

A real-life experience which occurred when I was a student in Huddersfield in 1988 :

I lived in a shared house with another student and his girlfriend - we lived in a terraced house with a sloping field down towards the back door.

Next door to us lived a lovely large yorkshire lady who would play with the rather large spiders she found in the back vegetable plot, apparently so that her kids wouldn't be scared in the way that we were, both of us being rather arachnophobic..

The spiders in the back garden were large, black and fluffy, with large, berry-sized bodies. She would make these spiders run up and down her arms, something that gave us the willies.

Inevitably these spiders would sometime turn up in our rooms, and occasionally our beds. The student living below me in the "lounge" room woke me up one night to tell me that he was moving into his girlfriend's room temporarily as he had just woken up to find himself being crawled on by two of these spiders. This gave us both nightmares as you can imagine, but nothing like the next thing to happen.

One day, mid afternoon I think, the guy below came upstairs to my room - he was white and shaking. He said there was a large spider in his room, on the back of a T-shirt which was hanging over a chair just inside the door, behind the sofa.

I thought I'd take a look - there, on the back of the black shirt was a spider that literally almost spanned the back of the T-shirt. It wasn't a black, fluffy spider like the ones from the garden, it was brownish, and had a large oval body, with long, spindly legs. I would estimate the breadth across the spider to be around 8 inches.

We were absolutely petrified, but also stunned that a spider of this size could turn up in Huddersfield. We went for the lady next door, and I fetched a piece of aluminium tubing from a camp bed upstairs.

Even the arachnophilic lady next door was surprised at the size of the spider. Whilst we cowered in the kitchen, looking through the door, she took a clumsy swipe at the spider on the shirt with the aluminium tubing, and knocked the shirt onto the floor. The spider promptly vanished under the furniture, never to be seen again. Needless to say, it was quite some time before my friend used the room again, and we both walked in fear through the room when we went for our post at the front door.

I have no idea where such a spider could come from - the spiders in the back garden seemed unusually large, but this was an enormous specimen, far bigger than the British record. There was a shop about 25 yards away, but this didn't look like a banana spider - it seemed to be rather spindly-legged.
 
Anything with more than six legs is abnormal and should be killed on on sight. Further more, anything that needs more than six legs is also abnormal and should be killed on sight. Even further more, anything that scuttles, runs, bites and is hairy AND has more than six legs should be killed from as far away as possible on sight!

...I'm arachnophobic and will kill any spider that I see, regardless of size and whether or not it is deadly. They simply don't deserve to live!

:eek:
 
-Oracle- said:
anything that scuttles, runs, bites and is hairy AND has more than six legs should be killed...

Ever tried killing a women's hockey team?
 
-Oracle- said:
I'm arachnophobic and will kill any spider that I see, regardless of size and whether or not it is deadly. They simply don't deserve to live!

Good luck Oracle, but I reserve the right to laugh when your home becomes infested with swars of flies!
 
im scared of spiders and now the big ones are out now,im am very anioxous and paranoid:eek:
 
Good thing some of you guys don't live in my house then!

The number of spiders that we have had in our house/garage is huge. We haven't had any of the sizes mentioned in previous posts but there was a real ugly onewith little legs and it's body was the size of a bubble gum ball. It was ewwwwwwwwy. We get them in all sizes/shapes/colourations in my house.

lucydru
 
Shocktopus said:
By the way, I'm thirty years old and have known about Bobhowlers for years as have a number of midlanders with whom I work, all of them younger than I.

Depressingly, I'm also 30 and I was mostly being facetious ;)
Though I grew up thinking a bobhowler was what happened when yer granny suddenly begun running round flinging her arms about. I've learned since that bobhowlers is moths and grandmothers drunk too much gin.
 
BumEggs said:
Yow knows kak-all about the black country then.

This is true. It sounds like a frightful place.

Where am yow from? Leicester? Droitwich?[/quote]

Wednesbury, but the posh end...
What's a noss?
 
if i had a spider ray gun[something i made up]i live in peace
 
Mr. Bingo said:
Ever tried killing a women's hockey team?


Mr. Bingo, I must admit your timing is impeccable.....lol


I also will second the motion to Oracle's first motion:

Anything with more than six legs is abnormal and should be killed on on sight. Further more, anything that needs more than six legs is also abnormal and should be killed on sight. Even further more, anything that scuttles, runs, bites and is hairy AND has more than six legs should be killed from as far away as possible on sight!


I believe this would continue to include cockroaches, squid, wasps, hornets, scorpions (not the band), and most if not all civil servants.

:D
 
Out in the Middle East they have a spider called a Camel spider which is not a Sun Spider in case anyone knows of them. Anyway it is the ugliest thing with more than four legs and is hairless. They are called Camel Spiders cause they feed off of camels when there is no insects about or lizards and if they find you sleeping rough out there they will have a bit of you too. they will feed on any extremity which is particularly dangerous if you are a man. Quite common is the sight of someone with a lump of ear or toe missing, you will not feel it as they aneathatise the area first.

The biggest I saw was about as big as my hand which makes it alot bigger than the Taratulas you see in the Pet shops but in our works was a picture taken in the 70's of one and no lie its legs touched the circumference of a landrover wheel. Glad I never founf that one or it found me! The one in the photo was dead (Luckily) as they seemed to get very attracted to our Generators and usually fried a bit!
 
Accounts have been in the media only in the last week about a rash of big-bodied yellow/black striped spiders (Wasp spiders) in Surrey, with people finding clusters of them in their gardens. As big as a child's hand, so they say...
 
Dragging the thread kicking and screaming back on topic for a second ;)

The reason insects grew so huge in Prehistoric times is because the atmosphere was much richer in oxygen (about 56% in the Jurassic, I think), hence they could afford to have thicker carapaces.

OK, go the Midlands...

Anyone heard of Jimmy Spinners?
 
Re: UK Spider

Guru_saj said:
A real-life experience which occurred when I was a student in Huddersfield in... [snip]

Um... can you give any clues as to whereabouts in Huddersfield, cos this may influence my term-time living arrangements :eek!!!!: :eek!!!!: :eek!!!!:
 
Huddersfield

Victoria Street, Moldgreen. (other side of road was demolished to form the new main road - although we got triple glazing as a result, all the now-homeless rats migrated into our property - brrr.).
 
What supporting evidence do you have for the higher oxygen levels in the Jurassic period? I thought if you got much more oxygen in the air everything would pretty much burn most of the time.
 
Re: Huddersfield

Guru_saj said:
Victoria Street, Moldgreen

Phew, that's far enough from my house. I can sleep soundly once again...
 
Can anyone who knows about spiders (Funnel webs) please check out my post on spiders of windsor please. Help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

luce
 
When I lived in Virginia, we had a pretty bad Wolf Spider problem in our house. We lived in the middle of nowhere, about two miles from the nearest streetlight and 200 yards from the mailbox! These wolf spiders would be scurrying across the rugs all night as we watched the TV. The two cats we had eventually got tired of chasing these 4 inch long monsters. One night I saw one crawl up the wall in my bedroom, and I took a swipe at it with a magazine. It fell to the ground and ran under my bed, where it promptly disappeared. When I turned out the light to go to bed, I kept thinking that I could hear it walking about under my bed. Although this visual did not help to lull me to sleep, I was tired from a long day and fell asleep. About ten minutes later, I felt something tickle my nose. I brushed at my nose absently, and felt a furry body scurrying across my face. I literally soared out of bed, fully awake, and turned on the light. As if on cue, the spider charged my feet, and I stepped on it barefoot. There was was a sickening squish and I emerged victorious. The next day we bug-bombed the house, but eventually had to move out 2 months later.:cross eye
 
spiders

In the district I live Gympie QLD, Australia, the first settlers of the Wolvi and Mother Mountain areas,reported big spiders (small bird)size and huge webs hanging from the lush tropical forest .Unfornately man in his quest for cedar logged and destroyed this puzzle,but Ill ask some old timers if they know if there are any patches left. Ill keep you posted.:eek!!!!:
 
Thanks, Wildman and taco, for resurrecting this thread - it's one I'd not seen before. (What else haven't I seen on this board?)

I had one surprise encounter with a very large spider in the bath, which caused me to give out a scream which must have been programmed into our genes from the Cretaceous period or before!

The wife went in and killed it - she was so butch! (She also liked ripping heads off live fish... I'm probably lucky she just left me, instead of disposing of me in some even more painful fashion.)
 
I would just like to say that I HATE spiders. One of them jumped-or dived, abseiled, whatever- onto me while I was little. Kinda leaves a mark.
However, would anyone be willing to pay, do you think, for this thing's carcass? If so, I may be persuaded to take a little trip...
Also my sister found a monster of a thing a while ago. Her BF now keeps it in a jar, where it is apparently quite happy, and growing steadily. Yes, I am well aware that arachnids do not 'grow steadily'. I think I'll have to see this for myself.
 
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