Posted on 01/04/2024 8:50:58 AM PST by Red Badger
SYDNEY (AP) — With fangs that could pierce a human fingernail, the largest male specimen of the world’s most venomous arachnid has found a new home at the Australian Reptile Park where it will help save lives after a member of the public discovered it by chance.
The deadly Sydney funnel-web spider dubbed “Hercules” was found on the Central Coast, about 50 miles north of Sydney, and was initially given to a local hospital, the Australian Reptile Park said in a statement Thursday.
Spider experts from the nearby park retrieved it and soon realized it was the largest male specimen ever received from the public in Australia.
The spider measured 7.9 centimeters (3.1 inches) from foot to foot, surpassing the park’s previous record-holder from 2018, the male funnel-web named “Colossus”.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
ROTFL! YOU are on a roll this morning. Keep it up.
Maybe I should have said "before you could say Waltzing Matilda".
It’s about as large as a common tarantula in the western USA or even a typical huntsman spider (but a bit thicker); this goes on my “meh” meter as a sensational stupid media piece. Think of all the 1,000s of thousands years the funnel web spider has been around, and just in our short lifetime someone found the “biggest ever”. So stupid…media do it stupid people, by stupid people. I can only hope this story encourages some folks to learn more about spiders, paleontology, history of the earth, etc.
The fangs would be pointed the wrong way to go into the shoe sole, not to mention that I’d be wearing some pretty sturdy boots if I were walking around in Australia. No flip-flops or even sneakers.
Nice reference to that old song, BTW. Haven’t heard it in decades; it’s probably too un-PC to play now, what with the line about let me abos go loose, Bruce.
Gonna need a bigger can of RAID!......................
true story: years ago I took the Indian Pacific (a very famous long distance train) from Sydney to a town called "Broken Hill"...which is very much in the Outback. It was March (still summer) and it was damn hot.It was there that I learned about the Aussie Salute (look it up.
While there I saw an Aborigine that was so black he was blue. I sear to God...it was amazing!
LoL. Great map!
Likely due to intensive awareness campaigns, rather than an exaggeration of the animal’s lethality.
Australia; still trying to find one damned thing that isn’t venomous there.
nope!
I’ve always wanted to visit Australia. The Broken Hill deposit is one of the world’s great lead-zinc-silver deposits, which I remember studying back in grad school.
We used a version of the Aussie Salute when I worked in Mexico to try to deal with the flying bugs there. One hand for the job and one to wave in front of your face. Corks on strings, a la the Four Bruces, probably wouldn’t have worked.
As scorpio said when he saw Dirty Harry’s 44......”My, that’s a big one”
i hate those things
Everything in Aus tries to kill you.
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