Giant spider eats bird
A giant Golden Orb Weaver spider caught a chestnut-breasted mannikin bird in its web and made a leisurely lunch on the bird. The photo was snapped in a backyard in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. From the Cairns Post:
Spider eats bird (Thanks, Jennifer Lum!)"Normally they prey on large insects, it's unusual to see one eating a bird," (said head spider keeper Joel Shakespeare at the Australian Reptile Park.)
Mr Shakepeare told ninemsn he had seen golden orb weaver spiders as big as a human hand but the northern species in tropical areas were known to grow larger...
"(The spider) wouldn`t eat the whole bird," he told ninemsn.
"It uses its venom to break down the bird for eating and what it leaves is a food parcel," he said.
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I wanted to say "medium sized spider eats tiny bird" ....... but I can't.
And I don't like that. I don't like it at all.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
HOLY SHIT THAT IS A SCARY SPIDER!
Not only is it eating a bird, but it's general shape EMBODIES creepy. Organic curves, glossy exoskeleton, pointy bits, and the joints are indefinably creepy.
GHEDE @2, Totally. It's very Cronenberg.
Godlike invertebrate?
From an engineering standpoint:
+1 for web strength
Another view:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/10/22/easpider122.xml
This is freaky for so many reasons!! I really can't dig spiders. I know they're smart and cool and 'beautiful' in some dark way; but if I'd walk upon this in my backyard, I'd be on the next plane.
*having massive arachnoleptic fit*
I'd knock the bird free and smash the spider for shits and giggles.
oh, that's just great. at the seattle zoo they have an orb spider, just chillin', with no glass in front of it, because they say it poses no threat to anything but an insect despite its vicious toxicity.
you know what else is about the size of a human hand? a human hand!
Great. Now I'm not going to be able to ever go to Australia without living in fear. It was bad enough when it was filled tiny spiders that could kill you. But fuck gigantic spiders. No way man.
now taratulas are kinda cute. all furry and that. like 2 gerbils in a costume.
but this monster is everything that spooks me about spiders, i'd have to nuke it from orbit. it'd be the only way to be sure.
thank you ahead of time for the month of sleep i'm going to lose.
Aiya Earendil Elenion Ancalima!
I am Australian. This is just one of the reasons why I have a paralytic fear of spiders (remind me to tell you about the time a hunstman spider the size of a large man's hand crawled casually across my car's dashboard. While I was driving).
Why does it have to be Australia to produce the scariest spiders and other disgusting poisonous things known to this planet?
I thought it was cute.
Sweet zombie Jesus! Thank god I saw this story NOW, as opposed to last year before I went to Cairns. And Ghede, #2, pretty much summed it up for me. Ahhhhh indeed.
*sounds of sobbing*
Ah yes. This (along with money and environmental issues connected to long distance air travel) is one of the reasons why I'll probably never travel to Australia, although the country fascinates me. A friend of mine emigrated there a few years ago and she had an interesting story about a 'mobile phone sized' spider coming out of her toaster... and frankly, 'mobile phone sized' is quite big enough, for a spider that apparently lives *in the house*, to deter me from visiting...
What do Australians with arachnophobia do, I wonder?
My technician is originally from Perth, Australia, and we're always joking about the fact that a hugely disproportionate percentage of all giant poisonous, man-eating, firebreathing etc. creatures on Earth are all Australian.
Hell, did you know the platypus has poisonous stings? (I'm so not kidding.)
I think it's a matter of national pride for them.
yes it is sort of a horrible thing to see in your back yard. but I still wish the pics were higher resolution.
OH GOD!! Nightmare fodder!!!
I don't think the orb spinners are as much of a problem for humans as the funnel web spiders.
a hunstman spider the size of a large man's hand crawled casually across my car's dashboard.
a 'mobile phone sized' spider coming out of her toaster...
WHY am I still reading??
The biggest spider I've encountered was about the size of a mini CD (the best comparison I can think of) while I was in Texas. No idea what kind, maybe a wolf spider? It led to a long showdown in the kitchen since I didn't really know how to successfully crush it fast but didn't want it to run away and not know where it went.
When I get sick of long, snowy, wintery days, I think about that spider and it makes the cold climate look more appealing again.
I'm restraining my mocking up the arachnophobes by reminding myself that I have an irrational hatred of millipedes particularly small ones.
Personally a big spider wouldn't freak me out, I mean... it's big. You can avoid it. Look. There it is, riding a bicycle.
Super poisonous tiny spiders would freak me out - were spiders to freak me out.
Gha!
Next thing you know it'll be attaching itself to people's faces to implant alien larvae...
Crikey!!!!!!!!
Unicorn chaser, plz.
*cries*
Ah, the stuff of nightmares indeed. I remember being terrified by a golden silk orb-weaver in our garden in Pretoria, South Africa (we also had brown widows, but that's another story). These spiders are common in some tropical areas and tend to span between branches on trails at head height, so one is very likely to walk face-first into one of them.
If its any comfort these spiders can be found all over the world, including the USA, as far north as North Carolina (according to Wikipedia).
I live in a basement. It's a finished basement, and really nice. Nice carpet, new paint on the walls, brand new closet and bathroom. And spiders. And sometimes centipedes, or millipedes or some kind of crawly thing that make my skin crawl. I thought I was getting over my fear of the creepy crawlies. Thanks, Boing Boing, now I'll have to start therapy again.
Did you know that if one of these spiders sees a human face, it immediately excretes a thousand centipedes that go flying down your throat? It's true!
MONSTRINHO_DO_BISCOITO
You beat me to Nuking line.
OK, is there some way to kill these things off? (I mean all of them, everywhere.) I don't care what the environmental consequences are: It would be worth it.
I mourn the passing of the unicorn chaser tradition. It no longer seems to be followed, and it was so cool.
Of course, like all normal mortals, I read BB in reverse chronological order, just to confuse myself, so the unicorn chaser served as a timely warning to brace myself.
Like BAAINE@25, I'm not so worried about the big ones. It's the small poisonous ones that freak me the fuck out.
My dad lives out in the country. I went to his place one time with a friend to help him run some cable through his attic. He didn't mention that his attic was TOTALLY INFESTED WITH SPIDERS! Not only that, but they were ALL BROWN RECLUSES AND BLACK WIDOWS! (Yes, they can co-habitate in the same area, not quite competing for the same food sources.) So we're trying to run the cable quickly but they keep DROPPING DOWN ON US FROM ABOVE AND CHARGING RIGHT AT US TO ATTACK! At one point my friend knocked something down that was hanging on a nail and THOUSANDS RAN OUT IN ALL DIRECTIONS! We had to keep any eye on each other to knock them off of each other as they landed. It was the single most creepy thing that has ever happened to me. We got the job done, maraculously without having been bitten, but I was shuddering for days afterword.
Another time I noticed a spider crawling along the INSIDE of my windshield as I was driving. At a stoplight, I identified it as a brown recluse from the violin shape on its back. I had a hard time watching the road in keeping an eye on it while I did my best to drive home calmly. Then I ran inside and got a plastic container and managed to flip it out of the car. I really didn't want that thing to stay lurking in the vehicle somewhere, possible making more little brown recluses.
So nasty spiders aren't just for Aussies. We got 'em in Texas in abundance!
Sorry, that should have been BLAINE. Obviously, I'm still a little freaked out about the incident.
These spiders are common in some tropical areas and tend to span between branches on trails at head height, so one is very likely to walk face-first into one of them.
See? Another proof that they are cunning, evil mofos and know exactly how scared some of us are.
"Don't worry, it's more scared of you than you are of it."
BULL!
I'm going to Google pictures of baby penguins now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8_NzM_sC8s&feature=related
Do you think the spider thinks the bird tastes like chicken?
I will forever remember the sight of a giant parasitic wasp flying slowly across my grandmothers garden in Sydney, carrying a pretty big spider (about 6cm squared?) on its way to finding somewhere quiet to lay its eggs in its paralyzed, spidery victim.
It sort of put the spiders down there into perspective.
#19 What do Australians with arachnophobia do, I wonder?
I get the impression a sort of arachnophobia is a default condition. It goes with the Australian part. As for what they do, they develop an unhealthy relationship with toxic bug spray.
We rented a condo in the mountains for a weekend, and I was a tad confused as to why it came with three different brands of bug spray. The resort manager advised me that Australians tend to get a lot of brand loyalty w.r.t. bug spray, and feel that the competition can't possibly save them from the bugs. So you have to have multiple choices, because you never know which one the client likes.
I'm not sure how much good the spray does, though. The spiders seem to have evolved the reflexes and knowledge to DODGE aerosols. They leap 4-6 inches when you try to squirt one. I ended up herding our unexpected houseguest out of the house like that, so I guess it worked, but I sure couldn't hit him with the spray.
#38: No idea, but I bet the spider tastes like crab :D
And people wonder why I don't want to go to Australia! BECAUSE I'LL GET EATEN BY A GIANT FRICKIN' SPIDER.
I've been bit by 2 spiders in the crotchatoral region in the last 2 years. I'm not certain, but I believe they were brown spiders, maybe recluse. Just google the those types of bites and you'll see my pain that I went thru. Before, I had a live and let live policy with all of God's creatures. Now, I kill all spiders upon detection in my home.
I've seen that sort of spider at home in Florida before. One made a web across one of the house windows (outside, thankfully) and caught a firefly in it one night. The ensuing epic battle and light show was better than TV.
...Reminds me of the one Far Side cartoon where two spiders are weaving a web above a baby carriage, with the following caption:
"Look at it this way: If this works, we'll eat like kings!"
@Om:
http://community.research.microsoft.com/blogs/alpineinker/eat-like-kings.JPG
MY VERTEBRATE FELLOWS !!! IT'S TIME TO GET UNITED AGAINST THOSE CREEPY MONSTERS THAT DON'T EVEN HAVE A CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM !!! WHATEVER YOU ARE A MAMMAL, A REPTILE OR A BIRD !!!
Where is your messiah now?
You fuckers owe us a whole ranch of Unicorns.
A tennis racket.
A good overhand serve.
Launched into the neighbors yard, and not in yours.
Priceless.
*crosses Australia off list of Places to Visit*
As a child growing up in Queensland, I saw my share of these spiders. I remember them, or a related species spinning giant golden webs...Also constantly having to check under garden furniture for redbacks... You eventually give up on fly spray, and just move onto the hardcore 'surface' spray. Good times.
I caught the moon today
Pick it up
And throw it away all right
I got the perfect steal
A cleaner love
With a dirty feel all right
Fallout and take the bait
Eat the fruit
And kiss the snake goodnight
Common ruse dirty face
Pretty noose is pretty hate
And I dont like
What you got me hanging from
Let your motor race
Pick it up
And get this mother gone
Out from and far away
The wooden stake
This thing has got me on
Diamond rope silver chain
Pretty noose is pretty pain
And I dont like
What you got me hanging from
I dont care what you got
I dont care what you need
I dont want anything
And I dont like what
You got me hanging from
At certain times of the year my garden is full of these spiders - and they can get pretty big too. But looking at this photo I have to say it appears to be total bs. Sure, the do things bigger and better in Queensland, but that spider in the shot is too big, too angular at the joints and the wrong colour to be a Golden Orb Spider. Even if it was, and it were really that size, the bird would have easily broken the web and/or had a tasty meal of the spider. Lastly, that bird looks totally fake.
When you're part of the species that mastered fire, everything else is kindling.
It's funny that 54 comments have been posted on this item, but not a single person has favorited it.
I don't play favorites. =D
This autumn, Sydney was absolutely covered in golden orb spiders. We had a particularly wet, cold summer and just before winter set in, they all made a spirited attempt to get a few spiderbabies into the world.
They can get pretty large. Hand-sized leg-spans. Spindly things, though, not tarantula bulky. The webs, however, are enormous, stretching from shrubbery up to the powerlines. The powerlines themselves were also absolutely covered in webs.
One of the less pleasant sensations upon arrival here in Sydney was constantly feeling stray webs brushing your face on footpaths. Especially when you looked into the garden you were walking past and saw Ungoliant hanging there, all stripy legs and lumpy grey abdomen with a larder of swaddled bugs hanging like a baby's mobile. The place is paradise, but the arthropods are pretty scary.
I changed all the info to make it look like this happened here in Palm Springs, then e-mailed it to my arachnophobic friend. Heh.
ANTINOUS: I take it back. You are not the Good Humor man. ;D
He owes me $1,000. He can lose a little sleep.
enough strength to penetrate a toenail
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc1Bb9YQYtU
RE: Funnelweb.
Don't try this at home kids!
We spend all of this time protecting the environment and it goes and makes up shit like this?
Full disclosure - I'm Australian, and have lived around this shit all my life. Yes, that's a big spider, but manikins are tiny little birds. My father keeps them, although not this exact type. The bird looks pretty big in the photo, but it's probably about half the size of an average sparrow.
Having said that, I'm no tougher around spiders than the average suburbanite Aussie. I used to hate walking to my old job in the summer, as the early start meant that I was one who got to walk through all the orb weaver webs from the night before. Experienced walkers arm themselves with a stick and wave it about in front of them like a machete. BTW, you can always tell when someone else has walked through one - the flailing body language gives it away even if the swearing doesn't. It's funny when it isn't you. The place I live now has spot the orb weavers seem to like - between my side gate and my laundry. I can't tell you how many times I've headed out to do some washing at night and ended up doing the spider web dance.
My father had one he sort of made his pet - it startled him one day and he caught it on the end of his garden spade and sort of flicked it at the side of the shed. It's body was roughly golf-ball sized and it hit the shed with a ::thunk::. Then, according to my Dad, it didn't even fall - it had managed to land on its feet and just sort of wandered off. Dad adopted it as a mascot and named it Irving, although judging by the size, it was probably a female.
A lecturer back in my university days used to enjoy telling the story of a motorcyclist friend of his who used to leave his helmet outside overnight with his bike. One morning he went out, got on the bike and pulled on the helmet - only to discover a palm sized huntsman spider clinging to the inside of the face plate...
Apparently he kept his helmet inside after that.
This reminds me of the Tear Garden song called "Sybil the Spider Consumes Himself".
Experienced walkers arm themselves with a stick and wave it about in front of them like a machete.
That's a good idea, plus it finally gives me an excuse to carry a stylish cane.
BTW, you can always tell when someone else has walked through one - the flailing body language gives it away even if the swearing doesn't.
I usually make a "pbfptbfpft" splutter as the strands invariably cross my mouth.
You know, Australia is home to quite a few spiders that are a lot smaller but venomous as crap.
At least you'd see this one coming.
I see all sorts of strange creepies down here in South Carolina, but that orb weaver is enough to make me turn into a gibbering child. No thanks.
http://community.research.microsoft.com/blogs/alpineinker/eat-like-kings.JPG
...Remember, Larson recycled a lot of his one-shot gags. He did a third one with a cow caught in a bigger web as well.
Om, it's funnier with a kid, imo ;-)
Awesome pleas for the unicorn chaser(s). Time for a CO chaser my moi.
We have fierce little brown spiders in my yard--one day my son and I found a nice web and the matron of the spider "house" reared up on her hind legs gnashing jaws and waving her front legs at us! She was very sporty and I was sorry later when I accidentally walked through her web. I mean to keep a notebook with all the critters in my urban yard--they are aplenty.
Does any other country have a dangerous creatures guide for dummies?
http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=9780731407224
#57
A photo I saw in The Age newspapera few years ago. Taken near Ballarat, in central Victoria, Australia.
http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2007/05/14/1505N_WEBS_wideweb__470x263,0.jpg
When it's a croc or a shark, worry.
That spider web isn't going to hurt any human. Leave the spider alone, or if you're really that worried - cricket bat.
The average Australian cat probably kills 1000x the number of manoikins per year, yet you don't panic about them.
I am =so= =happy= that those are stills. Video would really be too much. Imagine; there'd be noises...
I hearby request that tomorrow be declared Unicorn Sunday!
@ FLOW
Yes, we are perfectly aware we are not being rational at all. I'm a species bigot: Cats are cute and fuzzy so they get away with more. ;)
@ IMIPAK: I am =so= =happy= that those are stills. Video would really be too much. Imagine; there'd be noises...
That fast, high-pitch, horror movie violin plucking.
Spiders and other bitey-biteys are creepy but I don't understand how American people go camping and walking in places with giant carnivorous predators. Yeah, yeah, maybe a dingo took a baby once, but they're just dogs and not very big ones at that. You people have bears! And mountain lions!! I'll take walking into a spider web any day over running into one of those beasts.
d
bears and mountain lions you can reason with.
I think orb weavers and their nests are beautiful, at least the size we get here (Georgia). The most creeped out I've been is when I stepped on a large wolf spider in my house and the 100 or so little ones that I hadn't noticed riding on her back came scurrying out from under my shoe.
Re dangerous fauna in and around Australia, check out Douglas Adams' "The Snake Doctor" in . Try to find audio or video of him reading it.
And next we need an image of a giant spider eating a unicorn...
Uh, you may not want to read this....
A couple of years ago I accidentally swallowed one of those spiders. It had made a web spanning the trees either side of our front steps. It was above head height and not hurting anyone, so we left it there. (When you live in Australia you get quite relaxed about these things, I have three orb spiders on my back stairs at the moment).
Anyhow, one night I was walking up the stairs in the dark and got stuck in the web, which the spider had relocated during the day. While trying to tear the web off my face (It's REALLY tough, that stuff) I felt something skittering in my mouth. Yup, I'd inhaled the spider in my struggles. So I did what any reflex-controlled creature would do, I swallowed it. Straight down, Take THAT, spider.
So what does this prove? It proves that I'm tougher than a small bird. A hollow victory, but a victory none the less.
Arachnophobic in Australia writes;
One of my earliest memories is attending a Rodeo in Mount Isa (hell mining town about 500 miles away from Cairns - in the general direction of Suck by SuckWest)I was a tiny adorable blond-haired boy and I was wearing my cowboy outfit...dammit!
Me and Dad were playing chasy (tag? i guess) and I rounded a corner and ran under the temporary bleachers and came to a stop. Involuntarily.
My forward motion had been arrested by a web strung at tiny child-face height and it HADN'T BROKEN. I'm not saying it had actually caught me and held, but by the time I came to a stop, the bastard thing was STILL intact and stretched across my face like some Cenobite torture device....
I don't remember it being particularly sticky, but for some reason I didn't immediately extricate myself...until I noticed the resident of the web moving.
Towards me.
Now we all know it wasn't going to eat me (bullshit it wasn't) and may even have been scared, but I had severely shaken and warped its home and I was much bigger than it and it was STILL MOVING TOWARDS ME.
I ran. To the other end of the continent.
Just now I tried to go to a site and find the particular species, but discovered that I still can't look at even a photo of a spider (35 years later)
Was I an arachnophobe before that? Who the hell knows...
I left 'The Isa'* at 15 and have since lived in Australia's most civilized city (yeah...NOT Sydney thanks), I keep all my windows and doors closed no matter how hot it gets and if I don't have to crane my head at least a little to see the skyscrapers i know I'm too close to the country.
*btw - cute nicknames don't stop your city sucking guys
I very much like spiders.
I think I do not like these.
Takuan @ 79 - Bears and mountain lions you might see coming. You would certainly know if you had a bear or a mountain lion in your sleeping bag!
Shit Shit Shit Shit shit Shit Shit
mountain lions you don't see coming.
Three 'good' things about these spiders (and their nocturnal brethren, who are just as big but hairy and mean looking and hide during the day) are:
1. you don't find 'em outside of their webs, so you don't have to worry about finding them in sleeping bags;
2. Their webs are very strong, the spiders hang on very tight and if disturbed, they climb *up* as fast as they can, so if you walk into one you can step backwards and avoid any closer encounter.
d
Growing up in Australia, Sydney, I guess you get used to spiders. Part of life I suppose. They even became part of our childhood games. My brother and I used to go out into the garden armed with water pistols and see how many Orbs we could shoot. Huntsman's were ok as long as they remained on the other side of the window. I never came across a Redback though, till I came to Melbourne. Then found a whole nest full near my gas heater. Not impressed Melbourne. Not impressed. Recently had a big (about the size of my hand) hairy grey and white spider sitting in the corner of my garage which I used to greet every morning before it disappeared. My sister says I scared it away. =(
I'm know i'm late to the party but this is the original source: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/34709834/m/638004805931
i think this is awesome.
I would die. I would literally die. Seeing a spider the size of a quarter causes me to hyperventilate and gives me serious chest pains. If I came across something like this in real life (I didn't check out the picture, deciding just to read the comments so that I could sleep tonight) I might have a hard attack and cease to exist. And then the damn thing would eat me. :( I always wanted to visit Australia and now I know I can't.
that bad?
http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/exposure/
phobias are bad, we should try to defeat them. I myself have several shameful ones but I will never give up.
Tak @ 91 - Just reading the words 'panic' and 'hyper-ventilate' releases the adrenelin (US = Epinepherin) floodgates in me.
As a leader/celebrity of or little pond I think it would be helpful if you were to share...
I used to be terrified of spiders, but living here on Klendathu, I got over it pretty fast. I don't put my shoes on without shaking them out first, though.
Way to go Australians for having the calmness and fortitude of spirit of saying: Honey, look what I found in the backyard - go get the camera. I would have instinctively thought of the blowtorch and/or rocket launcher first.
I liked this thread. It has given me happy. Also LOLs. Thank you all.
Deserving of special praise: danimagoo @30 "now i'll have to start therapy again"
Lucifer @ 54's "everything is kindling".
Sproogle @ 63's inspired critique of environmental protectionism.
AND "arachnoleptic fit" from Sekino @ 7 gets all my votes for "Neologism of the Month".
Thank you again. You are all very special.
Great. That's my nightmares setup nicely for a month or two. Thanks a lot.