• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Giant Spiders (Ukraine, Peru, Cumbria & Elsewhere)

Spiders are excellent. How can anyone hate these creatures?? it makes me laugh how large mammals (humans) are so afraid of miniscule arachnids. If i did ever get scared of one i think id just step on it.
btw spiders do grow but have to shed theyre exo skeleton first so your friend with the spider in the jar would have alot of little empty spider shells to show u when u go see him... if u pluck up the courage :D
 
That's what I mean. If he grows steadily there should be a whole jar of flaky empty spider suits!
I have no idea why I fear spiders as much as I do. Nor do I know why I love to fly when even ladders leave me on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
What are phobias all about? Is there a thread on this anywhere?
 
maybe humans are scared of spiders cos our ancestors had to deal with more poisonous and now exstinct versions of the creepy crawlys??? is it possible that this fear has stuck around to annoy us in modern times even tho there are only 3 or 4 spiders kicking about the world that are dangerous to humans?.. the funnel web is the top dogs me thinks but why would someone from scotland have a phobia about spiders when all the bad ones live in the USA and Australia? :confused:
 
Apparently the Brazilian Wandering Spider is the most venomous.
I hate them because they are hideously ugly, and crunchy and run at you and try to eat you. They don't care how big you are, it won't stop them, they'll stick you in the fridge. They are EVIL!
I mean nothing has any right to have that many eyes and a body that resembles one single big claw.
 
yeah the Brazilian Wandering Spider is deadly... isnt it also known as a banana spider also cos it had a habit of turning up in banana boxes?
i always thought the funnel web was the most deadly to man cause its venom caused some sort of heart attack or stroke.
anyways i think spiders are ok but i wouldnt like to have a Wandering Spider chase me thru the forrest
 
xeno said:
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.
Click to expand...

I've heard of this but couldn't quite believe it at the time as it sounds quite terrifying and thats speaking as someone who is not normally afraid of spiders. The story I heard is that they also have a habit of leaping at people and can actually jump several metres!:eek!!!!: This was tied in with a story about a woman who woke up one night to find one sitting on her face and eating her nose!:eek!!!!: :eek!!!!:

You seem to have some experience, Xeno, tell me and probobly everyone else on this board, can they leap several metres?
 
Solifugids

The stuff mentioned above about camel spiders is very poorly researched.

"Camel spider" is another name for Solifugids (which ARE also known as Sun Spiders because some are active during the day), which are arachnids, but not spiders as such (The Arachnid family also includes ticks, scorpions, whip-scorpions, pseudo-scorpions and harvestmen).

Camel Spiders aren't interested in chewing off anything human in nature, but are known to make nests out of animal hair, so have been called "hair cutters".

They don't have venom glands, and like the scorpions they chew their food with their mouthparts. Solifugids have a diet which includes invertebrates such as insects, spiders and scorpions. Solifugid bites are very rare and aren't venemous - more damage is likely to be caused by subsequent bacterial infection. Camel Spiders can be very fast-moving and aggressive, and can make sound by rubbing body parts together.

They are desert dwellers, which may explain the "camel" name, and avoid direct sunlight by moving into patches of shadow - this includes human shadows, so they can "chase" a human as they move around, following the path of the shadow. Because of this, they are sometimes called "hunting spiders", although despite the physical similarities, they're not spiders in the true sense of the word.
 
Spiders do have lungs. They are flat and are called "book lungs"
(see Spiders, World Book Encyclopedia or anyother type ref.).

This giant spider could have been the result of a genetic
engineering experiment that escaped. Remember, these
people have created some terrible bio-weapons and I can't
think of a better bio-terror weapon than mutated archnids
and insects. The spider is one animal that throws pathological
fear to the nth degree in many people--myself included!
 
spiders

The Australian spider that worries me most,is the common house white spider? Or is it something that looks like a Daddylonglegs,any way this ones bite makes your flesh rot much like the snake bites that make the wound get bigger. Lots of older people get bitten (in bed surprisingly) and they carry these gaping wounds that take months to heal.Funnel web spiders are slowly spreading but they live outside, and you will get bitten if you stick your finger into their hole,so the best policy is to keep your fingers out of their holes.
 
Not really related, but not a nice thought either!

I used to have a pet tarantula, despite being arachnophobic (therapy, and it helped by the way), I ceased owning one when my girlfriend refused to share a postcode with it, ( As said earlier they do have 'book' lungs and breathe by absorbing oxygen, they also have a very primitive curculatory system and no veins as such which means, despite being limited in size, if spiders of the tarantula family fall from a subsantial height there is a good possibility that they would be killed from the resulting impact as it may case them to simply rupture, at least, so I am told. Also despite having five eyes they have very limited eyesight and although having a vastly acute sense of vibration and taste (scent based) they are almost completely divorced from the outside world, in addition, if mine was a good example of their type, as clumsy as they could get. Since they are like this and add to that the fact that their web is so primative it cannot, unless it is interwoven into a mesh, support their own weight, its a wonder they are not all in stress counselling.)

One time I was on the computer, kinda like this, when I heard the sound of the spider's glass door opening slightly, I turned to see my spider, which had squeezed a couple of legs down the crack between the sliding plate and the side of its enclosure was trying to pry itself through, distressing as at the time it was living at the foot of my bed.
Naturally soon after I installed a catch on the doors.

Incidentally there are aproximately 2000 spiders in the average home.

All the best.

Randall
 
GAAAAAAGH! THEY CAN OPEN DOORS??!! BLOODY HELL!
Ahem, yes, quite.
I remember I was greatly amused when I learned that spiders have hydraulic legs.
Oh, wildman, ANYTHING will bite you if you stick your finger in it's hole. Except student nurses.
(to the tune of 'I Wish I Was in Dixie')
Oh, I stuck my finger in a woodpeckers hole
And the woodpecker said 'God bless my soul!
Take it out,
Take it out,
Take it out,
Remove it!'

Thankyou very much...
 
Re: Not really related, but not a nice thought either!

Randall said:
Incidentally there are aproximately 2000 spiders in the average home.
Click to expand...

Where are they? Where are they?!
 
I'd rather have spiders than flies. Nasty, noisy, stupid things, buzzing against the windows trying to get out. Why the hell did they come in in the first place if they don't like it? At least all my spiders are quiet, modest and retiring.
 
The thing I can't stand about spiders is that they seem to 'target' me as a landing zone in my home. I'm assuming since I am most likely the highest point in the room it's what they aim for and while I'm sitting here at my computer they land in my lap or something......it's REALLY awful during the summer on my balcony it's almost impossible to go out there without bug killer of some sort.........
 
Does anyone remember anything about this huuge funnel spider they found down under? i saw it on newsround about 4 years ago it weighed 2lbs but was blind and did not move as it lived in a hole all day. as it never put any stress on its legs, it could grow massively heavy with a huge backside to stop things pulling out of its hole. i dont think it was poisinous but it had huge jaws. Does anyone know anymore????:eek!!!!:
 
They will get you while you sleep

I seem to remember reading an article that stated the average person swallows 2 spiders per year whilst sleeping.


If this is true then perhaps I will invest in some insect netting for my bed!!!


:eek!!!!:
 
I have a distinct sense of unease whenever I am confronted with any creature with more than two eyes or four legs! Spiders I especially don't like, but I will not kill them. I usually will try and trap them and throw them outside, and this is not through some altruistic sense of not wanting to kill them, but because I fear that there is a place reserved for me in Hell where everything I ever killed is waiting for me. Probably some kind of ever shifting pit that changes shape so I'm always up to my eyeballs in whatever is there!:hmph:
 
I swear that the "giant spider" story is very similar to a TV program or movie that I saw in my youth. A giant spider took up residence in an elevator shaft and devoured all that entered.

Anyone know the film/program?

And for you arachnophobes....

I happen to live in southern Arizona. Tarantulas are native here.

Male tarantulas here have the onus of finding a female. This means wandering around during the summer monsoons looking for a female in her burrow.

Well, as it goes in the desert, there are good years and bad years for all things.

A few years ago we had an abundance of male tarantulas.

The result was that a popular jeep trail outside the city was literally inundated at night by a wave of large spiders.

A local jeep club was coming back along the trail at night, when their tires started to spin madly. Odd for jeeps.

It was soon revealed that the cause was hundreds of crushed tarantulas which had turned into slick morass...

And don't even ask me about the Lubber Grasshoppers....
 
Re: Not really related, but not a nice thought either!

Randall said:
One time I was on the computer, kinda like this, when I heard the sound of the spider's glass door opening slightly, I turned to see my spider, which had squeezed a couple of legs down the crack between the sliding plate and the side of its enclosure was trying to pry itself through, distressing as at the time it was living at the foot of my bed.
Naturally soon after I installed a catch on the doors.
Click to expand...

I had to resurrect this post to tell you
a) this is the single most disturbing thing I have ever read on this board
b) I told this story to a girl at work, and it's apparantly got around. It was re-told to me today by someone else, *except* YES this time, it happened to a friend of someone she knows who used to keep spiders, and one day he was watching TV when ....!

The stuff ULs are made of!
 
Why oh why did I read this thread?It's time to go to bed and my skin is crawling now.Yuck,spiders.
A friend of mine said he used tyo live in the New Forest in Hampshire and one day saw some long spinldy things hanging over the rim of a bucket (as in in kid's bucket and spade) went over and saw teh biggest spider he'd ever seen sat in the bottom.
 
Posted on the first page:
well one of my freinds who live there said to me it is possible,like for the example the
kids who grew 3 arms and legs from the fallout.im still trying to find imformation and
no pictures yet.[possible kgb reports]
Click to expand...

try national geographic.
I read an article on it 4 or 5 years ago and it was outdated then.
Look in thier photo archives or did around the library.
it was very interesting.
 
Surprise at UL news!!!

Hi, I wanted to respond to Slytherin's post regarding my spider post earlier in this thread, my old nick was Randall but I've decided to use another name this time around. That's amazing that the story has made it around like that, are you sure you've not just bumped into someone who knows me first-hand and inadvertantly proved the six degrees of seperation rule, I do tent to tell that story quite a bit, I'm just glad it didn't try and get out during the night, I'm not that keen on wildlife roaming around me while I kip, I don't even like going camping!

(Anyway, its good to be back, alot of the people I used to know are either no longer here or they have new names too. sorry for my prolonged absence, no reason other than I've been really busy with work and a bit skint so I am distressed to say I missed the UNCON.)

All the best.

James
 
the horriblist sensaytions ievery had when i was yuonger was a bider crawling up my stomach 1 night it was about 3-4 inchs wide legs included and gods did i move out of bed it sat (sic?) on the sheet just looking @me and im sorry but i had to smack it over the head a couple of times to killed the bugger and the sheet was chucked into the corner jus to make sure itwasnt near me(please dont let the bider spirit get me pleeeeeaaaaaasssseeee:eek!!!!: ill be goood honest) niw i jus chuck them out of the window thats if the cats dont eat em first
 
The chicken spider is a new species to science. It comes from Peru and might possibly turn out to be the largest. It is so called because it has been seen by farmers dragging away chickens. It has a unique behaviour amongst tarantulas in that the spiderlings stay with the mother. In fact they live in colonies of up to 50 spiders spanning generations. They have also shown evidence of cooperative hunting, which helps when taking on larger prey like chickens!
 
The Chicken spider sounds liek the one out of 'Arachnaphobia'
 
There was a BBC Radio 4 programme about it, i'll try and find the link because you can listen online. I'm not making it up! The prigra
 
Sorry, the programme was called Adventures of a Spiderman. Just type chicken spider into something like google and you'll get it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top