Are Australian spiders really that big?

[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?)

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Sonnie, let me tell you of the war.

It was the day of '54, my squad was pushing dem Aussies back to their jungled base. We had the battle won, and victory was certain. When bam, outta da jungle came Aussies, riding tank-sized spiders, wielding their death spears, yodeling their death yodel.

That death yodel would paralyze you with fear, then their tank spiders would literally rip you in half.

I lost my entire squad to the death spiders, and have been suffering from severe alcoholism to cope with the horrible sight.

 

[IndomitableSam]

Much happier worrying about rabid raccoons and the rare bear here... Bears scare me less.

 

[AD-Stu]

For 99% of visitors, coming across a gigantic spider in Australia is about as likely as being eaten by a wild grizzly bear in the US. I've never seen anything bigger than an ordinary huntsman, and I've lived here 30 years.

 

[Slaanesh]

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?)

Try holding down ALT and type 0233. Check out this link [http://mrpatterson.com/accent%20marks.htm], look at the bottom of the page for the legend.

Much happier worrying about rabid raccoons and the rare bear here... Bears scare me less.

How? How in the hell can you be more afraid of raccoons then a god damned bear? Is there something about Australian Raccoons that I should know about? Why is Australian wild life so damned scary?

 

[SilentCom]

the coconut crab, is actually a spider:

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

Why did you have to post this?!? I almost forgot about the nightmares, but now they'll be back... D=

OT: Palm sized spiders are rather large, most of the spiders where I like are finger sized.

 

[Thaluikhain]

How? How in the hell can you be more afraid of raccoons then a god damned bear? Is there something about Australian Raccoons that I should know about? Why is Australian wild life so damned scary?

If the raccoon carries rabies, that might make it more dangerous and aggressive than a bear, especially if they are more common.

...

People worry about the funnelweb spider that lives in Sydney, they don't worry much about the hordes of deadly fruit bats. Funnelwebs haven't killed anyone since anti-venom was developed, at leats not by poisoning them. But the fruitbats carry a disease which can still kill humans.

 

[LobsterFeng]

I might be abit biased here but... May I just ask why people have such a problem with spiders? *looks over at my tarantulas*
Sure they are ugly buggers and sure, I grew up around scorpions and spiders ( my father is a zoologist ), but I honestly can't understand what the panic is all about.
FYI, my largest one is an Indian Ornamental spider. A legspan at about 7.1 inches, which is a bit more than a handful for me, granted I've got pretty small hands but... Hurts like a ***** when she gets stressad out and bites me, but she's starting to get used to me now I think. Only had her for a couple of weeks.

The definition of a phobia is an irrational fear of something. Usually the object of the fear poses no threat at all. So yeah most people realize that being afraid of spiders is irrational, as you are much bigger than them and most of them are harmless. But it's an irrational fear.

OT: I've never been to Austrailia, but there are plenty of poisonous spiders where I live. Like Brown Recluse Spiders and Black Widows. Also this is the story of my life:

Spoiler

 

[ChupathingyX]

Not really, the only large spiders I ever find in my house are Huntsman spiders. Other than that the rest are small. Of course there are other large spiders in Australia, but Hunstman are the only semi-common ones I've encountered.

Please tell me how a spider that large manages to get through windows/doors without you noticing.

I can't figure out how...

Huntsman spiders are very flat and can fit through very small spaces, I've see them do it in fact. Even the smallest crack in the wall, or that space under your front door, they can make it through. Also, they breed in houses too, and I have seen little groups of babies in the bathroom and other places...

...no where is safe...no where!

 

[DustyDrB]

Me before reading through this thread: I already know I'm not going to Australia just because of those demon spiders

Me after reading through this thread: Australia must be destroyed! Sink it into the ocean and let the sharks kill those eight legged bastards!

Seriously, I fucking hate spiders. I freaked the hell out last night when I saw one about the size of a penny. Though I am pretty sure that was a brown recluse. Its bite is able to cause some serious necrosis. Good thing I had a clipboard to throw on it.