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EVER EATEN A spider? The golden orb-weaving spider (Nephila edulis) has a plump abdomen that, after baking, tastes remarkably like pâté. Many years ago I fed one to a journalist on A Current Affair. She was very reluctant to chew it but agreed about the taste. The scientific name of this spider celebrates its culinary merits. French naturalist Jacques Labillardiere bestowed the name in 1799 after seeing the spiders roasted and eaten in New Caledonia. Other species of Nephila are eaten in Thailand, served raw as well as cooked, as well as in New Guinea, where they’re fire-roasted. About...

Two German tourists became lost in their four-wheel-drive vehicle in a remote part of Cape York after trusting Google Maps. They ended up having to camp for about a week before walking out to safety. What's next?: The pair are safe, but local rangers say it could have been so much worse and are warning people to take care. Two young men are lucky to be alive after walking for several days in the Cape York wilderness when their car became bogged after they followed Google Maps directions. German tourists Philipp Maier and Marcel Schoene left Cairns on February 4...

Some spiders will die when cold weather hits, but scientists warn an invasive species from Asia may survive and continue to invade the US. Scientists at the University of Georgia froze more than two dozen of the eight-inch-long Jorō spiders spotted on the East Coast to see if the black and yellow creatures could survive the harsh winters. The experiment showed nearly 75 percent of the spiders were unaffected, with the rest showing some injuries. The Jorō spider's golden web took over yards all over northern Georgia in 2021, unnerving some residents, and was soon spotted in South Carolina and...

A venomous eight-inch-long spider native to Asia, whose palm-sized females cannibalize their male mates, is flying up America's east coast and spreading out west. Experts say the Jorō spider can fly 50 to 100 miles at a stretch, using their webbing as a parasail to glide in the wind, and it's now also hitching rides up east coast highways - but the creatures aren't known to pose a threat to humans or pets. However, the jury is still out on the impact that this giant spider, which is believed to have first arrived in the US a decade ago via...

Fans of the 1990 horror comedy “Arachnophobia” may find their promised land in the rural Great Plains town of La Junta, Colorado. That’s because La Junta is ground zero for the annual mating ritual of tens of thousands aphonopelma, or Oklahoma brown tarantula. For a few months each year, this tiny community in southeast Colorado is prime viewing for fans of the brown-and-black arachnids, especially from August to October when the males emerge, looking for love. Rather than be repulsed when overrun by the large, hairy spiders, La Junta decided last year to embrace the annual ritual as a tourism...

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Things are already getting spooky this October. The word is going around that spiders are invading the Tucson area. Many of you have shared on social media that you’ve recently started seeing more spiders. Just around Matt Dunkel’s home he’s found five spiders. Around his Oro Valley neighborhood, he’s found three. “It’s been crazy! It’s been awesome! There’s been spiders all over the place,” he said. He's been seeing them pop up over the past few weeks. “Now we’ve just been seeing them everywhere so it’s been really kind of neat to see all the little...

The Kidney Garden Spider bears some resemblance to Pringles’ mustachioed mascot, but it also already has a name.Like many modern brands, Pringles isn't afraid to try a bizarre promotion: Pringles Christmas candles, NFTs, and Thanksgiving-flavored chips boxed like a TV dinner. But this time, they may have gone too far by... trying to rename a spider? Now, in Pringles defense, the spider — currently named the Kidney Garden Spider — does look a lot like the brand's mustachioed mascot, Mr. P. The spider has a round white body with distinctive markings that look like two tiny eyes above a massive...

Rare spiders and scorpions are being put at risk by a growing global trade driven by the demand for exotic pets, including species so rare that scientists were previously unaware of them, a team of international researchers has warned. They said that at least 70 per cent of spiders and scorpions being sold as pets, for medicine or food have been sourced from the wild. The researchers detected more than 1,200 species available for sale in a generally legal trade. The team said they are growing in popularity as "cool" pets that take up little space but warned that harvesting...

A traumatized man is being bitten to shreds in his own home by Britain’s most venomous spiders — but no one will help him. Russell Davies is in so much agony from hundreds of bites all over his body he is sleeping in a tent outside his Southborough flat. The false widow is said to have a bite as painful as a wasp’s sting and Russell’s body is covered in them. The 55-year-old tenant’s skin is so sore he has been forced to stop working as a chef.

Geneva (AFP) – There are now 50,000 known different species of spider crawling the Earth, the World Spider Catalog announced Wednesday -- and there might be another 50,000 out there. The WSC, based at the Natural History Museum of Bern in the Swiss capital, said the 50,000th spider registered is the Guriurius minuano, which belongs to the Salticidae family of jumping spiders and hunts its prey on shrubs and trees in southern Brazil, Uruguay, and around Buenos Aires. It was described by the arachnologist Kimberly S. Marta and her colleagues from Brazil and is named after the now-extinct Minuane people...

An invasive species of spider the size of a child's hand is expected to “colonize” the entire East Coast this spring by parachuting down from the sky, researchers at the University of Georgia announced last week. Why it matters: Large Joro spiders — millions of them — are expected to begin “ballooning” up and down the East Coast as early as May. Researchers have determined that the spiders can tolerate cold weather, but are harmless to humans as their fangs are too small to break human skin. The Joro spider is native to Japan but began infiltrating the U.S. in...

Image credit: Science Photo Library / Alamy Stock Photo Look at this lanky orange hellspawn. I’m going to go ahead and say that we are not buying whatever it’s selling. We’ve got enough problems without having to contemplate the motivations of this faceless alien baby. Meet the giant Antarctic sea spider (Decolopoda australis), seen here absolutely dwarfing a European sea spider. An example of gigantism, wherein an animal grows unusually large due to a lack of predators and other factors that would limit their size, the Antarctic sea spider can grow to more than 30cm in diameter (about the length...

Giant huntsman spiders are one of the world's biggest spiders. An Australian huntsman spider. Image credit: Shutterstock Huntsman spiders are large, fast spiders that live in warm climates throughout the world. They are named for the way that they catch their prey. Unlike many spider species, huntsman spiders "don't build webs to catch prey," said Christy Bills, an entomologist and the invertebrate collections manager at the Natural History Museum of Utah. Instead, these spiders hunt down their prey. There are thousands of subspecies in this family (Sparassidae). The average huntsman spider species is about 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) long with...

Cutting heart attacks, strokes possible even in young adults with poor cardiovascular health “Usually, if the donor heart has stopped beating for more than 30 minutes before retrieval, the heart can’t be used,” Macdonald said. “Even if we can buy an extra 10 minutes, that could make the difference between someone having a heart and someone missing out. For people who are literally on death’s door, this could be life-changing.” Spiders aren’t the only venomous creatures being studied for medical purposes. A diagnostic drug in development uses the potent venom of the Israeli deathstalker scorpion and an infrared dye to...

Annette shows the spider she found in her garage that she trapped inside a glass jar. Her friend has her phone camera out and pointed at the spider. They find out that every time Annette's friend taps the phone screen to focus, the spider inside the jar moves and flinches like she is directly touching it in this creepy clip from Riverside, California on May 27. https://youtu.be/rheEifSjmOY

Canberra's Deep Space Communications Complex is one of the world's most powerful means of looking into the depths of the Solar System. So it would make sense that an alien spider the size of a football field would target it in its initial invasion of planet Earth. That's not what happened, but that's what it looked like for a brief moment. A security camera fixed on the giant antenna at Tidbinbilla had an unwelcome pedestrian atop it. A huntsman crawled over the lens, making it seem like it was dwarfing the 34-metre wide deep space antenna. "When mission scientists decided...

One of my kids found this in his room today and took the picture. He & mom let it go outside. Apparently the leg-span is about the size of a nickel. I don't recall seeing anything like this before in our area (Minneapolis subs). Anyone have a clue as to what species this is?

(Alvesgaspar/Wikimedia commons/CC BY-SA 3.0) =============================================================== A tiny brown invasive species of spider that's creeping its way across the UK has a dangerous reputation for dissolving flesh, one that many experts have argued isn't deserved. There's now compelling evidence suggesting that stories of the false widow spider (Steatoda nobilis) causing horrid skin infections has at least some basis in fact. The false widow has called the UK home ever since it was spotted on its shores in the 1870s, most likely having hitched a ride from Madeira and the Canary Islands off the African coast. In recent decades its range has...

New spider species discovered at Moss Landing State Parkit took the professor 22 years to find enough evidence to prove the spider was both a new genus and species.

Tiny and vividly-coloured, Maratus spiders are unique to Australia and have proved an Internet hit where videos of their elaborate courtship dances with added music and photoshopped accessories have clocked millions of views. At just 22 years old Joseph has now described a total of 12 species of Peacock Spiders, having previously described five in 2019. Despite growing up terrified of spiders, Joseph became fascinated by them over time and has already proven himself a world leader in Maratus research. In his previous research, Joseph was sent specimens to identify by a dedicated spider-loving community of the not-for-profit Project Maratus...