GAH!!!. If there’s one thing I hate worse than a spider, it’s a zombie spider.
[sub]ew ew ew ew ew freaking EW![/sub]
True but the NAME is camel spider, that’s what everyone calls them and I had forgotten that they were a form of scorpion…did get to see a buddy completely lose it after waking up in his cot with two of them on his mosquito netting…did NOT ever, EVER sleep in that tent again.
Nephila are extremely docile creatures. Even handling them is unlikely to lead to a bite. If you do by some miracle get bitten, then, as it says on Wikipedia, the result will be minor. Neurotoxins are hugely variable in their impact. This is a stunningly beautiful and elegant creature.
I find the negative overreaction to spiders to be a tad sad. I was an arachnophobe - I understand the irrational fear only too well. It was really messing with my life. But at no stage was I silly enough to think that it was a simple creature, a fraction the size of me, which needed to be dealt with. The problem was in my head. So I dealt with it. Granted, learning about spiders led me to overdo the cure and end up irrationally obsessed (as my posts to this board will indicate!).
Have a look at the photo again. Have a look at the elegant way she holds her legs (it is a female). She creates that incredible web, with multiple kinds of silk woven together in a way we cannot replicate. It shines golden in the sun. Your reaction should only be awe.
I was talking to an Iraqi vet (as in veteran, not an spider doctor) last night who was talking about the “camel spider”/scorpion. He said they’re nowhere near as big as other vets like to make out, but they are fearless and horrifying. He said they frequently run at you, unlike other spiders/pseudo-spiders, and “if you go ‘raaaaarrr!’ to them, they go ‘raaaaarrr!’ back”. 
Just for the record, they’re not true scorpions either. Looking at Bug Guide, scorpions are in the order Scorpiones while wind scorpions (including camel spiders) are in the order Solifugae. Spiders by the way comprise the order Araneae.
All I can say is look at the pictures…that right there is one big damn bug no matter WHAT flavor it is. They are pretty fearless though, (anecdote) I went to poke one with the barrel or my M-60 and the damn thing JUMPED ON IT AND STARTED RUNNING TOWARD ME!!! GAHHHHH!!! Dropped that sucker like a piece of red hot steel and jumped RIGHT the hell away. To my chagrine, one of my buddies, who must have a circus geek in his ancestry, went and PICKED IT UP WITH HIS BARE HAND…BLEAH, BLAAAARGH…(/anecdote).
Those things gave me nightmares.
You had it your sights and you didn’t fire!
Why are you called Xploder again?
Well, being that I probably would have, at the least, got an Article-15 (non-judicial punishment), not only was it not in my sights for more than a second or two, I never expected it to run up the greaking gun barrel at me. Plus, I should have said that said gigantic bug was on the side of a deuce and a half at the time which would have surely not only put holes in said truck but also possibly in me. Too bad I wasn’t thinking of that at the time, I just didn’t want the sucker to get all the way up to me.
Nice sized spider, but it’s still a perspective trick. Looks like the hand is two or three feet behind the web. So far, no one has found a spider with larger legspan than the Theraphosa tarantulas. Mine got 9" and was a monster.
I like spiders, I can even pick one up and let it walk on my arm. They are also allowed (in small numbers) in my house. If I get too many, I pick them up with a glass and a paper and move them to the garden.
Though it may not be a spider, I think the camel spider is beautiful. This is a pic my nephew took in Afghanistan, in the boonies south of Kandahar. He said they had to check with a flashlight before they lay down at night, and the critters left when you gave them some sort of warning. They are very shy and not aggressive (he says), but it’s not a good idea to lie or sit on one.
That seems to be a different sort of spider than the ones I saw in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. It’s definitely not the kind of spider that would run at you and attack your boot.
btw…Desert Boots=MANY Spiders=0
Reminds me of when I was looking in horror at a tarantula for sale in a pet store, and the cheery young clerk walks up to me and says “Want to take it home? Only thirteen bucks!” so I ask him what it would cost to watch him stomp on it. “That’s only thirteen bucks, too!”
Horrible young man. Should be stomped on. I’ll do it for thirteen bucks.
There’s an interesting story behind the second photo (the one with the sergeant’s sleeve in the foreground) on the page Xploder cites here (I’ve simplified his URL a bit). It started out as part of an infamous hoax email that started turning up just after April Fools Day, 2004. See my page here on this and other “camel spider” hoaxes. A soldier who knows the sergeant in the picture later corresponded with me and pointed out that comparison with standard insignia on the sleeve showed the bodies to be about 4 cm long, not 40 cm as a casual glance might suggest.
The 6th photo on the page is actually stolen from one of my pages. It was taken in Oregon. Solpugids are by no means limited to Iraq!
MoodIndigo’s nephew’s photo, on the other hand, is a true spider, not a solpugid (“camel spider.”) Looks like it’s in the huntsman spider family, but I’ve never seen one so pale before - probably an inhabitant of white dunes. Cool!
Back in the day, I had a girlfriend in northern Thailand whose house seemed to be infested with some sort of giant spider. Looked like they could have rearranged the furniture if they wanted to. It was especially creepy to see the mothers carrying their egg sacks underneath them; it looked like they really were carrying a piece of furniture.
Ignorance fought. Thanks!
I physically shuddered at the pic of a spider eating a bird.
Ugh. This weekend I saw the second largest spider I’ve ever seen in the wild, in my back yard (the largest, which I’ve named Big Grey, was also in the back yard). Bear in mind that I have not seen a tarantula in the wild.
This thing was huge. I’m pretty sure it was a wolf spider. You know those wolf spiders that get into your house sometimes and run across the carpet really fast? Well, this was the GOD of those spiders. Enormous. Worst of all was where I found it: it dropped out the coils of the hose as I was uncoiling it to fill my kiddo’s swimming pool.
Says the giant spider disguised as lynne-42…
I went after one with my vacuum cleaner hose once. When it was sucked up the tube, it was heavy and solid enough to feel it rattle and shudder its way up the tube, and I heard it clunk into the dust trap, just like it was a nickel. I dropped the hose and screamed like a little girl (if one were occupying a 35 year old body).