Hmmm another thing to add to the catalogue of mysterious creatures, pretty cool though. Reminds me of the time my mum thought it was a good idea to take me to the zoo and get me to hold a young goliath bird eating spider in an attempt to get me over my fear of spiders, just made the whole thing a hella lot worse.

However i have recently found the cure for my fear and that was knowledge, yep learnt about all the spiders in my country (England) and now know there's nothing to be afraid of . Although i think that Congolese spider would give me a run for my money

I don't know if it's possible for the same reasons someone pointed out on page one, however i hope it is possible. Spiders are brilliant creatures.

However if a spider were that big then i am sure there wouldn't be many of them. Spiders can be very terratorial as can be evidence by the ground dwelling spiders in the amazon among others. So it really would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

However i find it interesting the locals talked about the spider webs. Maybe they came across massive webs created by lots of small spiders and made the assumption it must have been a massive spider.

But anyway yeah i hope they find a massive spider

Originally posted by Tribble
So my point is if they could evolve to that size in an average wooded area in California, I think the Congo could produce larger ones

Yeah, we get some big desert tarantulas here in AZ as well, but I've noticed the ones up north, in the forest, are alot darker and more aggressive. So, plants and oxygen must play a part in their behavior as well. Down here in the desert, they aren't aggressive at all.

I'm sure there could be a few freak specimens of spiders around the world, with some sort of growth disorder which probably shortens their lifespans, like people. At this point, my logical side says that in general, they've evolved to compete in the small-sized world of bugs and I believe that their biology limits their size as the experts say.

Hey im still trying to get in touch with my uncle to see if i can get any info for your thread, Im going to call him again in about a half a hour to see if i can get him this time.
Hopefully he has some mad story about whopper spiders from hell for you
,keep up the good work!!

I bet they are real: insects in the right environment evolve some unique adaptations - they are probably carrion feeders like vultures, existing on monkeys and such that fall to the jungle floor and die.

I live in florida; me and the girlfriend got freaked out by a wolf-spider that was about five inches across - you could hear its feet as it ran up a set of blinds. Never heard a spider run before.

I caught it in a trash bag and tossed its ass out in the orange grove - the damned thing jumped at me as soon as I released it.

I had been getting a lot of stuff internationally on Ebay - I wonder if it was one of those big aggressive funnel-web spiders from Australia that somehow just hitched a ride in my package.

Golf Ball? I have seen wolf spiders larger than a sheet of paper! On the St. Mark's trail that leads from Tallahassee down to the coast at St. Marks, these things make webs 40 feet across! They build their webs about 20 feet up in the pine trees so that they miss the bicycles and joggers. From the ground they appear bigger than a hand, but when they occasionally drop and are on the ground in front of you, they are actually much BIGGER!

When a spider that is almost a 6-8 inches across, jumps out of a tree from 30 feet up, and does push ups in front of you to intimidate, it creates a prehistoric irrational fear and makes a 200lb well conditioned grown man jump and squeal like a little girl, trust me!!!

I grew up in Southwestern Ohio, in the outskirts of Cincinnati. Always lived right on the edge of a dense woods. I'll never ever forget this one night my oldest brother and I went out to a nearby basketball court shared by our neighbors and us at about 9 o'clock at night or so.

FULL OF WOLF SPIDERS. Enormous. They are very hairy, usually oblong-shaped, with a roughly 3 x 7 inch leg span. Thick hairy legs. Usually black or dark gray. We decided to put the basketball down, grab some nearby bricks and sticks, and clear the courts. Well - we never played basketball that night. Sure if you whack them with sticks, they'll scurry away faster than you're comfortable with. But if you try to kill one, you'd better be prepared for war.

I remember taking a brick, weighed 5 pounds, and really slamming it hard right on top of one of the bigger ****ers. It scared me to get so close to it, because those those things can really move - but sure enough I got him. But he didn't die! It hardly even crushed him - the devil crawled out from under the brick. It was bleeding, and a bit slower than before, but it didn't look very wounded.

I forget whether I finished the job or not, that became instantly irrelevant. I realized how powerful these things were right there and then. There were so many others on the court that my brother and I just left after that. I often joke that spiders are aliens from another planet because of this incident.

[edit on 14-8-2010 by Son of Will]

this work?
i guess not.




[edit on 15-8-2010 by fooks]


whoo hoo! ok, this puppy attacked me when i was shaving! glad i had a safty razor.

had to destroy it but it was a mighty battle! i am a size 9.

i can't tell you the battle, btw this guy is soaking wet with bygon so it looks smaller!

[edit on 15-8-2010 by fooks]

[edit on 15-8-2010 by fooks]