Are Australian spiders really that big?

[Lt. Vinciti]

The cocount crab was cool....Hmm perhaps someone has asked...What are they like? Just hangin? Agressive? Do you run into them often?


Also part of these pictures make my legs from under this table....-shudder- hate spiders so much...

 

[chiMmy]

That depends, if I can hear it walk it gotta go. If not, I'd rather not bother it if it's not bothering me.
If they on the other hand starts to crawl on me or near my keyboard, they're doomed. We don't really have that big spiders here in Sweden though.

 

[captaincabbage]

the coconut crab, is actually a spider:

this is a medium sized one, btw, they can get bigger.

Oh shush, stop scaring the forigner.

OT: Don't worry mate, Australian spiders aren't that big, they're just FUCKING DEADLY AS FUCKING FUCKERY.
Seriously, just take a bit of a wide berth around aussie spiders and you'll be fine. The huntsman is the big baby/stoner of spiders and most others are pretty docile. Thrust me, this is coming straight from an Australian arachnophobe.
Oh, also there's the Wolf Spider. Fuck that guy, just, fuck.

 

[LordHotCakes]

Ah yes. Golden Orb Weaver... Words fail.

No. Everything fails. Because this exists, there can be no loving God (who could not justify creating this), nor a malevolent Satan (who could not abide such competition), nor natural Evolution (there is nothing "natural" about this). There is only the stark, naked reality that there exists a monstrous, unspeakable feedback loop in the food chain that produces things like this.

I had already reconciled my life with the fact that some species of spider have demonstrated the capacity to learn, or that certain species of trap door spider can catch and eat tiny birds from carefully-planned places of ambush on the ground. But this?

It is a goddamn spider that eats birds. It eats them from the air.

So if everything fails due to this thing existing, then I guess it's sorta like dividing by zero. From this day forth all things, everything past, present and future shall be referred to as "...".

 

[Alcamonic]

Suddenly I appreciate Sweden a whole lot more.

I wonder if Siberia is a nice tourist place, or maybe the north-pol.

I kid you not, I am terrified by spiders. Even the common house spider we have is more than I want to deal with. Grab it with a rug and then proceed to burn it gives me only mild comfort... For where there is one, there is a mother, and where there is a mother there are millions of those damned things! I HAVE SEEN THE EGGS!

As someone mentioned earlier about spiders hiding under toilet lids, thanks to someone saying that a few years ago, I am unable to sit down without checking first.

 

[SpAc3man]

*snip*

this is a medium sized one, btw, they can get bigger.

I have seen many coconut crabs but I have never seen one that big...

 

[Thaluikhain]

Honestly we haven't had any spider deaths since 1981. Redbacks and Funnel Webs are the only ones potent enough to be lethal but I tend to be more worried about White Tails, not venomous but their bite will cause necrosis (decaying/rotting of the flesh) around the wound, they tend to hang out in your pants and shoes and can be fairly aggressive (though probably not as aggressive as the Funnel Web).

IIRC, they proved it wasn't the White Tails that caused necrosis, that was an urban legend. I think there is something that causes necrosis when it bites, but either I've forgotten what it is or nobody knows. There might be some sort of invisible spider running round biting people.

 

[-Adracko-]

This thread just makes me think of the movie "8 legged freaks" ...

 

[selce]

Dont have very many large spiders where I live, mostly just a lot of the smaller kinds like Wolf spiders, brown recluse and black widows.

 

[ssgt splatter]

Awwww, they're adorable! *equips Honey Badger Anti-venom* Besides, they're mostly helpful creatures. It's just a shame they're mostly terror-inducing, the poor misunderstood little guys.

See? They kill wasps! I'd take spiders over wasps any day, the miserable, life-hating airborne squads of death. Wasps want nothing more than to fuck your shit up.

Spoiler: Case in Point

So show some love to our helpful, eight-legged friends.

Your image of the wasp is broken. Funny meme of the spider though...at least I think that is what people call memes.

 

[JaceArveduin]

I grew up in the woods of northern Arkansas and as far as the local spiders go, bigger means less dangerous e.g. tarantulas and wolf spiders.
It's the little black widows that you want to watch out for.

yeah, and brown recluses can be a pain if they get a good bite on you. I'm off in OK, so wolf spiders are the main things I see, had more than a few living in my room a year or so back. Killed the ones that got too close. I don't mind them so long as they stay away and don't get in my stuff.

 

[Irridium]

Yea I'd say they are pretty big.

Oh and I just had to share this, I think I fainted a little.
*image snipped to preserve what little sanity remains*

No, HELL no, fuck that. FUCK that. That shit needs a nice heaping of flamethrower and nuke applied to it. Perhaps an Exterminatus just to be sure.

Hold me. I've just spent 4 pages not knowing whether to cry or scream.

The other week I got out of bed in the middle of the night and saw one of those things with the tiny body (millimetres wide) and really skinny legs, and I couldn't fucking sleep all night.

I woke up to one crawling on my arms. I screamed like the girliest girl possible and slept on the couch for the next two days.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Awwww, they're adorable! *equips Honey Badger Anti-venom* Besides, they're mostly helpful creatures. It's just a shame they're mostly terror-inducing, the poor misunderstood little guys.

See? They kill wasps! I'd take spiders over wasps any day, the miserable, life-hating airborne squads of death. Wasps want nothing more than to fuck your shit up.

Spoiler: Case in Point

So show some love to our helpful, eight-legged friends.

Your image of the wasp is broken. Funny meme of the spider though...at least I think that is what people call memes.

Fix'd, I think. I'll go alter the original. Let me know if this doesn't work.

 

[YepGeddon]

I found one of those funnel webs on the awning of our caravan while I stayed in Victoria in the outback, wasn't actually aware that it was one of the deadliest spiders in the world at the time, cos you got used to all the huntsmen running around, so y'know, took a picture, popped it in a mug and chucked it in a hedge. No biggy

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

My mother is going to Australia for 3 weeks soon and I am having so much fun winding her up about the huge spiders. Muhahahahaha.

Being here in England a couple of centimetres is as big as they get here. I don't mind spiders in general, we tend to get alot of wasps and flies in the garden and the spiders save me having to kill them all.

 

[hazabaza1]

Holy fucking shit, palm sized spiders?

 

[Tom Artingstall]

I spent February-May of this year working on one of the larger cargo ships supplying Australia with cheaply made Chinese tat and in return carrying extremely smelly raw Australian cow hides to China to turn into inexpensive leather products, but I digress.

I worked on a ship.

Around Australia.

I spent 90% of my time crawling around the cargo holds checking the stuff we were carrying.

We got a lot of stowaway Aussie spiders.

FUCK ME.

I boarded that ship as a quivering arachnophobe. By the time I left I was so desensitized to giant crawling fear-machines that I can now happily stroll through the insect house of the local zoo without so much as a shudder.

 

[zomnomnom]

Yes, our spiders are huge and they SHOOT FIRE FROM THEIR EVIL BLACK EYES.

 

[arrapippol]

Daddy-long-legs are poisonous, but they don't bite humans, so they're fine.

Spoiler: my response to you

Daddy Long Legs are not venomous. Just a stupid urban myth. They have no venom glands. Familiarize yourself with this link [http://spiders.ucr.edu/daddylonglegs.html]. The Daddy Long legs spider(yes there is a difference) are venomous, but its so weak that it just gives you a mild, short, burning sensation. It doesn't even need treatment.

one word: touche (how do you get the accented e?)