The wonderful, horrible world of spiders

Comments by readers of my entry on urban wildlife got me thinking more about spiders.

Why do they inspire such horror? Why is it that humans generally agree on the notion of two legs good, four legs good, six legs bearable, eight legs bad (and no legs also bad, for that matter)? There are all sorts of explanations — most of which centre on our evolutionary past as we evolved on the savannah — for why, when we discover that a rain spider (Palystes sp) has emerged from behind a picture to sit placidly on the wall above our beds, we shriek, break out in hives, collapse in a heap etc etc?

(I have rescued many rain spiders from the house over the years; I do not believe in killing them and I am very slightly less scared of spiders than the average human being. However, this is a delicate operation involving a jar and a sheet of cardboard, and may involve random flailing of limbs should the spider escape too soon.)

The subject that triggered all of this, of course, was Sydney’s fabled funnel-web spider, the world’s deadliest. If you’re interested in a close-up view of a funnel-web, take yourself along to Sydney’s Wildlife World to observe one safely ensconsed behind glass. It is a frighteningly large and fat thing — not hairy, like a tarantula — but still appalling in its own special way. Which is oddly comforting, because you would expect a dangerous spider to look the part, not like that pathetic little apparently innocuous violin spider. I once met a woman who was on crutches nine months after being bitten on the leg by a violin spider, surely the only arachnid ever to feature in a double page exposé in Huisgenoot.

The immediate pain, vomiting and numbness with possible death of the funnel-web, or the long-term tissue damage of the violin spider? Not an easy choice. But it could be worse: I could live in the jungles of Peru. That’s because it seems that the Goliath bird spider of Venezuela has some competition for the title of the world’s most horrifyingly huge arachnid: the chicken spider of Peru — so named because it is alleged that these tarantulas have been witnessed dragging chickens into their burrows.

Martin Nicholas, a British water treatment salesman who lives in a converted chapel and collects spiders for fun, went hunting for the chicken spider he’d heard rumours about and reported the following:

“The largest specimen observed during the making of the programme had a body length of 95mm and a leg-span of 250mm — the size of a dinner plate.”

Think about it.

Also think about the fact that, thanks to the spider-cam Nicholas sent down the creature’s burrow, these animals live together and hunt communally. They even share their quarters with a small frog that Nicholas suspects may be involved in keeping the burrow free of ants: ladies and gentlemen, we have an arachnid that employs an amphibian as a servant.

It’s so … South African.

Now there’s a spider for people who think that our wussy rain spider is the worst nature can throw at them. You have no idea.