The Wondering Jew

A killer super-spider

That’s not one. Which, as you’re about to find out, is quite fortunate, because if it was, I’d be dead by now. I encountered this little fella yesterday, and while he’s not a funnel web, our encounter did lead to me finding out quite a bit about the little bastards.

Yesterday, I was outside working on the garden and doing my best to retain as much blood as possible, much to the chagrin of the hordes of mosquitoes who were doing their level best to drain me of every last drop of it. While overturning a few mounds of earth and pulling out weeds, I turned round at one point to see this guy sitting on a rock, completely motionless, just staring at me. I imagine I disturbed his home while yanking up all the roots that wound through the soil out there, and he probably just came out to see what the hell was going on. He didn’t attack me though, he just stood there looking at me as if to say “Dude, what the hell!? I’m trying to sleep!” In fact, he sat there motionless long enough for me to go back inside, grab my camera, and take this picture of him. It didn’t seem like he was going to attack me, but still, being conscious of the fact that Australia is home to some pretty nasty spiders, I thought it might be prudent to try and identify this one before carrying on working around it.

So, I went inside and looked up an Australian spider identification chart. The first one on the list was the funnel web, and I was quite relieved to see that this wasn’t one. The funnel web is big (up to 70mm end to end) and black, which huge muscular fangs.  As I read on, I learned more and more about the funnel web spider, and the more I learned, the more disturbed I became.

Funnel web venom, it turns out, is among the most harmful venom to humans of any animal on the planet. It’s a veritable cocktail of nasty chemicals and toxins, any one of which on its own is enough to give you a ball-achingly bad day, but the main one is a substance called atraxotoxin. This is the stuff that will mess you up. I’m not going to go into details about the symptoms, but let me just say that if you’re lucky enough to have other people around when you get bitten by one of these things – lucky in that if there’s nobody else around to call an ambulance for you, it’s pretty much curtains – rest assured that the cost of your survival will be the knowledge that your friends and family got to watch you soil yourself while you spasm uncontrollably for at least two hours, while in excruciating pain. And that’s just to start.

So it’s safe to say you don’t want to get bitten by one of these. But that’s ok, as our parents made sure we learned when we were young that spiders are probably much more scared of you than you are of them. Well, whoever made that up clearly never heard of the funnel web. They’re not scared of people. In fact, they’re actually described as aggressive spiders. What that means in practical terms is that whereas most spiders will run away given the opportunity, these guys are up for a ruck, they actually want to bite you. They don’t run away, and to make matters worse, they don’t just give you a quick nip to scare you off while they make good their escape. No, during a funnel web attack, they clamp onto their victim with a vice-like death grip and bite repeatedly until, well presumably until they get bored or distracted by another tasty looking human. I came across one university medical department whose website stated that “in most cases the experience is horrific”. This isn’t some shmoe’s opinion, this is a university medical department! And don’t think covering up will protect you; their fangs are powerful enough to pierce a fingernail with ease, and their incessant repeated fang-jabs have been known to go straight through thick leather shoes.

Still, not to worry, these are exotic spiders, and quite rare in densely populated areas. Well, actually that’s not true at all. In fact, they’re extremely common in residential areas, and are known to quite frequently wonder into people’s homes, especially in the summer. You see, on a hot summer night, the male funnel web, feeling a bit randy, wanders off into the night looking for a mate. They generally end up in people’s houses, and being somewhat pissed off that rather than finding a hot piece of funnel web tail to schtup, they’ve come across the likes of you and me, they decide a good biting will be in order instead. They’re also known to quite commonly wander into swimming pools, where they can survive under water for up to 3 weeks.

But their natural habitat is soil, they’re ground spiders. They’re called funnel webs because they live in holes which they dig into the soil and line with web, creating a funnel. So I’m sure you can imagine that all those holes in the ground, which I had previously dismissed as unimportant, suddenly became much more foreboding.

Still, all this is pretty horrific, and is enough to engender within me a deeply ingrained hatred of funnel web spiders (and I love spiders!), but that’s not the worst of it. The worst thing is, their venom is only harmful to primates. It’s completely harmless to other animals; cats, dogs and rabbits are known to be bitten by these things and walk away unharmed. That means they actually evolved a specific venom just to screw with us. I think we did something to piss these guys off in the distant primordial past. I don’t know what, but whatever it was, they sure as hell haven’t forgotten about it.

So what we have is a spider that not only has one of the deadliest venom’s known to man, but a stinking attitude problem to go with it. These spiders having this venom is like someone giving Osama Bin Laden control of the world’s biggest nuclear weapons arsenal; in short, a freaking bad idea. I don’t know whether I’m better off with my new found knowledge of funnel web spiders, so that I can be better prepared, or whether ignorance is bliss. Either way, my mission in life is now to stay the hell away from the vicious little bastards.

Anyway, back to the picture at the top. So it’s not a funnel web, which I’m sure you can appreciate given the circumstances is a very good thing, but then what is it? I don’t know. It’s not on any of the spider identification charts I found, and doesn’t fit any of the other descriptions. Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as a funnel web…right?

Merry christmas!

The Wondering Jew x