Giant spiders

Originally posted by gossipnancy
largest confirmed to the public is 12 inches long 8 wide. Enough venom to kill anything it bites. Im guessing much bigger are out their.

definitely there must be bigger spiders out there...

lets say that the tallest human you ever saw or heard about was 6ft tall...how would you ever know that there are 8ft tall humans?

so the largest spider now is a little over 12 inches wide ..than surely there are spiders 15 and 20 inches across...that hide in caves and only come out at night....very frightening indeed

reply to post by Krono


This maybe slightly off topic...so I'll say sorry in advance if my experience is useless to the thread!



I actually went on a spider hunting trip while in the Amazon jungle in Peru, after a few hours of walking through the rain forest the guide found a hole about 6 to 8 inch wide in the ground by the side of a tree

The guide then picked a twig off the tree and attatched a leaf to the end of the twig.......He then proceded to poke the stick down the hole.....wiggling it from side to side for a few seconds.....then, while withdrawing it....I saw the big bugger of a tarantula that lived there......It was as big as my hand!!......It came out fighting!!

Now on Topic!

I don't believe there are giant spiders in the jungle!!....If there were any, A tour guide would be taking tours to see them!

Off topic again!

After hunting the tarantular we went fishing for yellow bellied piranha in a lake that was known to be home to a 30foot anaconda.....I caught chit loads of piranha but never saw the snake

Originally posted by skitzspiricy
Why do i do this to myself!!

Everytime there is a thread on Spiders, i click on it and look through the pics and vids, and give myself nightmares for a week

I'm so glad i live in the UK.

Although to an arachnophobe like me, even smallish spiders turn me white as a sheet.

This time of year the Garden Spiders are out in force. I swear they are getting bigger each year. The one in my friends garden has the fattest body (almost the size of a 10 pence coin) with stubby little legs. I always manage to find myself walking through one of their webs by accident *shudders*

I feel all itchy now *goes and takes a shower*

edit on 3-10-2011 by skitzspiricy because: (no reason given)

I echo your feeling - I cannot help click on them either - but am so thankful that being in the UK we dont have to deal with anything like this...incidentally I walked in from work about an hour ago and a "big" spider about an inche across was on my bedroom wall so he soon bit the dust...I can cope with the little ones - but I wouldn't even visit a country where these monsters could be experienced. No Thank You!

This thread is so disturbing I am going to smoke on my balcony.....It's interesting that these creatures scare me more than the idea of being attacked by say a very large dog. Probably because spiders are so horribly alien.

Originally posted by blocula
if all spiders were 2 or 3 feet across in size. i don't think that humans would have been able to evolve to the point we are at right now, if at all... spiders at those sizes would be really, really fast and they are ambush predators...

here's the biggest known spider > en.wikipedia.org...

But not all spiders are the same size...

big spiders are preferable to tiny spiders, imo.

theyre too fat to hang from threads from the ceiling, so you cant brush your head against them in a dark room. theyre big, so theyre more visible, they probably make enough noise to be audible to an alert person.

plus theyre furry, and kinda cuddly in a way.

giant spiders could easily hide/live underground in deep holes,caverns and caves.mostly coming out at night to ambush and devour their unsuspecting prey...

can't think of anything more horrible that to have,without warning,a 3 or 4 foot wide spider very quickly leap on you,knock you over and violently with force, slash it's 3 inch fangs into your body,injecting you with a 1/2 pint of venom and then rapidly spin you around within its web,then eat you and you would be able to hear the audible sounds that it would be making the whole time...a living nightmare...and they have been seen that big before,many times..

I think the only thing that limits size is oxygen conversion. I'm not sure anyone's found out the what our present day levels of oxygen requires of their Book Lungs?

Originally posted by CynicalDrivel
I think the only thing that limits size is oxygen conversion. I'm not sure anyone's found out the what our present day levels of oxygen requires of their Book Lungs?

i don't know?...the less oxygen levels of today, have'nt shrunk down the elephants or whales,or rhinos much.their still almost the same size as they always were...why would spiders be any different?

reply to post by blocula


Huntsman are actually great to have around the house, seems crazy I know but these guys are brilliant at getting the other buggers. plus they are perfect house guests, although they can be a bit nuts sometimes, and they look well... like a nightmare come true. BUT you don't die from one of they're bites, just hurts like hell, it's those little ones with the red back you have to watch out for, or the other one with the white stripe, now they're just plain nasty

reply to post by blocula


it's also to do with gravity, an exoskeleton isn't as strong as internal bones. A spider the size of an elephant (god forbid) wouldn't be able to move...apparently.

i have geko's and all kinds of bugs come in and out of my house,

not that a geko is a bug, i know that.

but a big spider or any spider, i don't mind.

don't let me see you. period!

had a big one i found when we were moving.

no problem, felt bad he was out of a home.

5ft spiders? ain't a chance in hell i'd tolerate it if it came near me.

i'd beat it to death with my dog.

Originally posted by k0mbination
reply to post by blocula

 

Huntsman are actually great to have around the house, seems crazy I know but these guys are brilliant at getting the other buggers. plus they are perfect house guests, although they can be a bit nuts sometimes, and they look well... like a nightmare come true. BUT you don't die from one of they're bites, just hurts like hell, it's those little ones with the red back you have to watch out for, or the other one with the white stripe, now they're just plain nasty

great having around the house!!! what!!! i would'nt even consider living rent free, in a house that was in an area where those giant huntsmen spiders are. i'm in mass. and the biggest spider that i ever saw here was about 1-1/2 inches across.although we do have black widows around,but i've never seen one.

i guess i inherited a little of my mothers terror of spiders...she had a nightmare of one 3 feet across, descending down upon her from the ceiling as she layed in bed...and it was looking right at her with it's multiple eyes, fangs arched back and hissing!

reply to post by blocula


they're really not THAT big, up in queensland they have some huge spiders. Some friends of my went camping in far north queensland (about as remote as it gets here) and woke up to they're tent completely covered by not one but three webs so thick they at first thought it was a very heavy fog...They left that day after they tore they're way out of the webs. That would be something to scare the hell out of ya mom eh!

reply to post by NightGypsy


lol! he was on his "last legs" from the roach killer.


sucker charged at me from under the sink when i was looking for him!



just like the rino charging the hunter in the movies!

i was on the floor, eyeball to eyeball! i kept firing!

he is soaking wet in that pic too so he looked a lot bigger!

Originally posted by blocula
giant spiders could easily hide/live underground in deep holes,caverns and caves.mostly coming out at night to ambush and devour their unsuspecting prey...

can't think of anything more horrible that to have,without warning,a 3 or 4 foot wide spider very quickly leap on you,knock you over and violently with force, slash it's 3 inch fangs into your body,injecting you with a 1/2 pint of venom and then rapidly spin you around within its web,then eat you and you would be able to hear the audible sounds that it would be making the whole time...a living nightmare...and they have been seen that big before,many times..

edit on 3-10-2011 by blocula because: (no reason given)

lol! thanks for the visuals!

they don't really "eat" as in munch.

the venom injected makes a soup out of the insides of the prey.

then they sip it out till you're just a deflated skin sack.




eta; spiders are amazing creatures.

if there's a hell.thats where they come from...

Well, I won't be having a good night's sleep for at least a week now. Why did I click on this thread? Why? I read the subject, yet I had to click, and read, and check the links. AGHHHHHH!!!!

Spiders creep me out to no end. It's the little ones though that bother me. The once I can't see, that could be in my shoe.

Funny sort of on topic story. When my son was about 7, he was really afraid of spiders. We always had grapes on the table, and our cat liked to sneak up there in the night and eat/bite them. Well, one night she must have been chasing one around and popped it up into my son's shoe. The next morning he was getting ready to head out the door to school and started to slip his feet into his shoes. He put his foot in one shoe, and the grape popped between his toes. He screamed bloody murder. My wife and I nearly had heart attacks because we thought something was seriously wrong. I've never seen him freak out like that, but he had thought that a spider had crawled into his shoe and that he just "popped" it. Since then, he's pranked many of his friends by putting a grape inside their shoe. It works like a charm. Give it a try with the arachnophobe in your family.

reply to post by Mystic Technician


I find the concept of big spiders to be terrifying!
I don't like spiders,not even little ones.

I took these in my backyard a few years ago. Now I know they're not giant spiders, far from it actually they're about the size of a quarter. If I came across something like this only 3+ feet across well he'd have an easy meal cause I would probably drop on the spot of a heart attack. You can throw snakes and rodents even other bugs at me all day long and I won't bat an eye, I don't know what it is about spiders but I can't stand them. And yes I had to get good and drunk to get as close to these horrors as I did so I hope they creep some of you out as much they creep me out.