Arachnia

[dhaus]

Seems fitting that Schatzi would be posting these.  Sort of analogous to her in the arenas waiting for all the bugs to fly towards her in her Hurri web.  (self protecting insert:  I bet Schatzi in person would only look like Arachnea BEFORE she teed off the gods.)

[mussie]

I must reiterate that the GIANT huntsmans we used to get in that house were NOT how big a Huntsmans should get.

On a 17" screen at 1024x768 the pic of the huntsman I posted is about the size you would normally call Big for a huntsman.

But again for some reason we used to get the GIANT ones at that house Imagine the Pic I posted about 2.5 times bigger. Its outer legs would just about cover the screen from edge to edge.

NOTE: I was looking at another subspecies of huntsman and (after seeing the picture) I think that the ones we were getting were actually this one (I can remember those hairy grey legs they were almost as thick as a small childs finger )

Species:Isopedella flavida (QM)  
Previous species name: Isopeda flavida  
Family: Sparassidae formerly Heteropodidae  
Body length: female:23mm  male:19mm  
Habitat: Under loose bark but also on walls in sheds and houses  
Toxicity: Uncertain; may only induce mild illness but probably can cause necrotising arachnidism  

NOTE:Huntsman spiders DO NOT build the sterotype spider web they actually hunt their prey....

NOW heres the extra weird thing
I lived in that house for about 2 Years in that time I saw 2 (maybe 3) of the Giant Huntsmans but there was this other GIANT spider.

- It was not as wide as the huntsman but Its abdomen was about the size of a lightbulb
- No one in the house could identify it.
- It had Thin legs
- It (and again I watermelon you not) hissed at us when we put a Jar over it to capture it. (I wanted to take it to the museum but the sister in law was there and she let it go in the back of the garden (Dam Hippy thankfully It was a big garden).

There was somthing about that house, and giant spiders.

I got a bunch more tales about encounters with spiders but I will tell ya them later.

Oh and I am sure some other Aussie is gonna read this and say I am full of watermelon but I swear this is the honest truth...



EDIT:
Personally I dont like to kill insects in the house, they are not doing any harm but if its 10 oclock at night and the kids are screaming and I just cant catch the dam thing I will kill it.

As for the GIANT Huntsmans I seam to rember catching them in a tuppawear container and THROWING the dam thing as far as I could whilst running in the oposite direction....

[nirvana]

Bats are better then dragonflies and are more cuddly too!

[BlueJ1]

I HATE spiders. Besides the extremely red ones you most ooften see on concrete in the summer and daddy long legs. We have black widows and wolf spiders here. Last night I took the airconditioner out of my window for the winter.When I woke up in the morning there was a effing huge nest of spiders that had moved in whike the a/c unit was there. I hadnt seen them last night because it was dark. My head is about 2 feet from the window. Ugh...

I hate these bastiges too...

[AWMac]

Spiders are evil...

Had a Brown Recluse bite on the inner left thigh..late Friday nite while sleeping... come Monday Morning I had a choice if the antibiotics didn't work it was surgery time...bye leg.

North Korea uses alotta spiders in their tunnels... most are just ugly and scary... some are hard biters.

Mac

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Erm.. Nice spread Schatzi. You could cut down the 'web' a bit though.

[Excel1]

Originally posted by mussie
Oh and I am sure some other Aussie is gonna read this and say I am full of watermelon but I swear this is the honest truth...

I don't think many people that have seen a big huntsman will doubt you.

The avondale spider can grow to a size of 8 inches in leg span, which just means as far I'm aware no one has yet found an avondale bigger than 8 inches. It doesn't mean bigger ones don't exist though. And that’s just one species of huntsman found mainly in a relatively small geographic area in Auckland. With your multiple species spread out over a much larger area it's not much of a leap to believe that there can be instances where the spiders exceed the normal for "big" ... like it's not as though all tall humans are pre programmed to stop growing when they get to 6' 6"

That hissing spider that you couldn't identify maybe uncommon and perhaps not even catalogued yet. Many of the less common  native spiders in NZ aren’t in the "books". I have come across a few strange looking spiders over the years and failed to find any references matching their descriptions.