Chicken-Eating Spider

[Siam_Sam]

Geez, I am thankful we do not have THIS thing in Thailand. :eek:

[bbs2k]

From the article:

Most tarantulas are in no way gregarious. In fact, they often cannibalize their own young. So seeing that was very unusual. But it may make sense. It looks like when they go out at night as a group, they can catch and kill larger prey by working together.

:eek:

Like people?!!?!?

[Asimovian]

I hate you for making me read that before going to sleep. I used to think it bothered me to see lions taking down a zebra or an elephant, but now I have to imagine roaming herds of freakishly large spiders taking down fowl, too?!

You, sir, are evil.

[Ogre]

@bigbabysweets2000

From the article: :eek:

Like people?!!?!?

No. Like soulless, eight-legged wolves.

With venom.

:eek:

[Mangetout]

That’s nothing - check out this bird eating fish!

[Tapioca_Dextrin]

Sometimes spiders don’t know when to stop.

[Tapioca_Dextrin]

Sometimes spiders don’t know when to stop. :eek:

NB not a double post

[Staggerlee]

We also discovered that those spiders appeared to be keeping a pet. There was a little frog that lived down in the hole with the spiders. It may offer some sort of service to spiders, like sweeping up ants that might bother the spiders.

Makes me think of a grisly Beatrix Potter story - a family of anthropomorphised spiders with a little froggy housemaid.

[CalMeacham]

The climax of David Gordon’s wonderful eat a Bug Cookbook is a recipe for South American Bird-Eating Spider (which i assume is the same as the Chicken-eating spider):

Eat-a-bug Cookbook: 33 ways to cook grasshoppers, ants, water bugs, spiders,...

Unfortunately, Gordon himself wasn’t able to prepare this dish for his cookbook – the specimenm he arranged to get was delayed in the mail, the dry ice completely evaporated, and it started decaying. Maybe by now he’s had a chance to get another and prepare it.

I love that fact that the recipe starts by telling you to snip off the poison fangs.
Incidentally, the engraving used to illustrate this chapter shows such a spider killing a bird, and looks as if it’s taken from some 19th century natural history. There’s no real scale, but the bird being killed looks considerably smaller than a chicken. I could see a spider killinmg chickadees and sparrows, but I think chicken is a bit of a stretch, and I suspect the name in the OP is hyperbole.