Among spiders, the females are normally the more brightly coloured and bigger sex. Tarantula girls especially are generally much chunkier than the males, even when the overall maximum length/width is similar.
It’s newly described, yes (though as the article says, scientists first saw it 3 years ago)- but I’m sure the locals have long known about an 8-inch brightly coloured spider that regularly lives in houses…
This is why I hesitate to vacation in tropical climes.
Spiders will not eat your face in Iceland.
I took it to mean the number of suitable trees have dwindled, not the spider population. Fewer trees means they are moving into buildings.
Jebus fuck almighty.
Kill it!
It’s beautiful!
Obligatory Aliens quote here.
What a cute little critter. It’s all dressed up for the cotillion.
I think it’s pretty. I once had a orange-kneed tarantula as a pet (probably about 1/4 that size).
Not that I’d want it sleeping on my face. But I don’t like it when the cat tries to do that either.
Gee, can you imagine if you thought you just had a zit on your chin, but then you squeezed it and a bunch of little spiders came out?
As for the sleeping/face comment, a true story.
At our cabin in northern Quebec, there live Dock Spiders. They are not as big as these monsters, but they are plenty big enough - say, a legspan of 4 inches.
Well, one day we went to the cottage to find a window busted and the place full of mosquitos. We fixed it up as best we could, and rigged a homemade mosquito net from a sheet that just covered our faces.
I wake up next morning, to see an enormous dock spider happily clinging upside down to the sheet - some 6 inches over my face.
Wriggling out from under that was a very careful exercise!
Great, it’s the fucking Easter Spider. How in the hell does something that big go unnoticed for…well how long have there been hominids in SriLanka? Why are there not temples built to this horror?
It probably had killed and eaten everyone that had seen it before.
That is so amazing. Looks really cool.
When we lived in Florida, we did a lot of camping. And as is common with camping, the kids are put to bed and the adults stay up and sit around the campfire, swapping stories, and having a few drinks.
After a couple of hours of this, I got from my chair and proceeded to walk out to an area that was a bit more remote to find some relief. By the light of a particularly bright moon, I walked between two trees (as I had a couple of other times during the night) and ran my face smack dab into the center of a banana spider’s webbing, and felt what seemed like a golf ball hit me in the forehead.
I gave myself a bloody nose dispatching that friggin’ spider.
We call those ‘muffin-top spiders’. They’ll grow out of that phase in their late teens.
Here is a fun fact. Did you know that on average 7 people a year are eaten in their sleep by these spiders? It’s true!
Giant spiders flying through the air??!?!?!?!?
Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!! :eek::eek::eek::eek:
Well I think they’re adorable, the little buggers.
Have they found an adult one of those yet?
When I first saw the headline I assumed they would be in Australia.
