Eight-legged lodgers on the move

[Stoo]

Meet bob, the spider..

[Speed]

Nice picture, yeah those ones are fine. The big black things give me the shudders!

[Ferral]

Or how about for Lions Nick :

Lion : Mobile Zebra / Gazelle chops machine (funny thing is that Lion is an anagram of Loin : keeping on the meat theme ! )

Believe it or not the big cats actually prefer gazelle, thats how you see Lions with injuries, off the horns when they are trying to fight back. Theres one type called an Impaler (pronounced Impala) as it has huge straight pointed horns :

Grant Gazelle :

http://www.outtoafrica.nl/animals/en...estemming_id=1

Impala :

http://www.stock-photography.co.za/s...mpala-rams.htm

There are also 2 different types of Zebras :

Grant Zebra :

http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/grants_zebra.htm

Common Zebra :

http://www.kenyabeasts.org.uk/zebrac1.htm

Difference between the 2 Zebras is on the Grant Zebra the stripes meet on the underbelly. On the common Zebra the stripes dont meet and it has a white underbelly.

I learnt all this stuff when I was on safari last year at Kenya, our guide Sami was a great wealth of knowledge.

Anyhows, back to spiders !

Apparently all spiders bite but with the smaller ones you just dont feel it. One of the worlds most lethal spiders is in Australia, if it bites you have around 20 mins to get to a hospital and get the antivenom. It delivers a small dose of a neurotoxin which is extremely deadly. People have had to have limbs amputated as the toxin does allsorts of damage to nervous system and muscle structure.

If my mind serves me right its called a Funnelweb Spider :

http://www.avru.unimelb.edu.au/avruweb/Fws.htm

[xavxen]

When I went To Greece a few years ago, we were walking down the street in broad daylight.

Saw a black "rock" on the floor. Got closer and found it was a spider as big as my shoe (size 7 at the time). It was HOOOOGE!

We carefully skirted round it, walked on turned back and saw a little local guy stop next to the creature...wait a few seconds, then jump on it...both feet (barefoot). The spider actually exploded with a blast radius of around 2 ft. Actually wet myself in shock!

[MAS]

We carefully skirted round it, walked on turned back and saw a little local guy stop next to the creature...wait a few seconds, then jump on it...both feet (barefoot). The spider actually exploded with a blast radius of around 2 ft. Actually wet myself in shock!

That is possibly the grossest thing I have ever heard. How can you sleep at night?!

[Konan555]

One of the worlds most lethal spiders is in Australia, if it bites you have around 20 mins to get to a hospital and get the antivenom. It delivers a small dose of a neurotoxin which is extremely deadly. People have had to have limbs amputated as the toxin does allsorts of damage to nervous system and muscle structure.

They've very well equip to deal with them over there, you can go a lot longer than 20 minutes IIRC.

Just have to remember to put something right around the Limb (if it is a limb) that's bitten to help slow the venom's path through the lymphatic system.

[xavxen]

That is possibly the grossest thing I have ever heard. How can you sleep at night?!

With a sheep, upside down, like everyone else... d'uh!

[shelley bda]

Legless is dead or i think he is he hasn't moved for a day, i even caught a big juicy fly and stuck in his box, he just sat there while it buzzed about his box he's either dead or depressed

I don't like spiders ( though i do get attached to them if they have been about for a while ) so i made my stoopid student Nathan ( we have college kids on childcare courses in placement ) poke him i think we'll have a funeral for Legless tomorrow

[amjedm]

Got up this morning and lump in the throat so I thought I must have eaten a spider last night, you must have heard "on average we eat ....."

Apologies if someone has already posted the following

the picture on the first page of this thread is of a Camel spider and the following link contains some information

http://www.snopes.com/photos/bugs/camelspider.asp

Although the creatures shown in the photograph above appear to be far too big for camel spiders, they look misleadingly large because of their closeness to the camera, which creates an illusion of exaggerated size. (Note their size in comparison to the uniform sleeve which appears in upper right-hand portion of the picture.)

[Speed]

Got up this morning and lump in the throat so I thought I must have eaten a spider last night, you must have heard "on average we eat ....."

Apologies if someone has already posted the following

the picture on the first page of this thread is of a Camel spider and the following link contains some information

http://www.snopes.com/photos/bugs/camelspider.asp

Lol, I've heard the "on average we eat .....", but to be honest it sounds like rubbish. I forget what the number is but there are not enough spiders in the world.

As for the lump, it's likely just food or snot or something!

[amjedm]

As for the lump, it's likely just food or snot or something!

Joking aren't you, only managed to get rid of it late morning

[Reaps]

My mates house is notorious for large spiders

One time we spotted one and threw a book at it and thought we killed it (as it wasn't moving) but we turned away for a second to point it out and the bloody thing had scarpered.

We never did find it again Makes me shudder.

[Speed]

Joking aren't you, only managed to get rid of it late morning

Not really, would have to be a pretty big spider to get stuck in your throat. More likely to be a sharp crisp or something.

[XA04]

I handle daddy long logs all the time, catch them and put them outside (we get a lot in the house this time of year). I've never been bitten nore have I ever heard of anyone being bitten.

As for Uk spiders being poisonous but can't pierce our skin, that's a myth. I've heard and belived it myself, those spiders with the really thin legs are supposed to be one of the worlds most poisonous spiders. But it was disproven by testing their venom. Really big native Uk spiders can pierce the skin, my dad was bitten on the thumb by a really big spider he found. You could see the two fang marks, but again, none of them are poisonous to us humans.

Actually.. just search around on the net or somewhere, You'll find daddy long legs are highly posionous, but not a threat to humans as they can't pierce the skin. If you can't find any proof on this I'll happily find some URLs for you

As for your dad been bitten by a spider.. fair enough, most spiders in the UK aren't poisionous, I have seen some real big ones around recently though..

(Didn't I post this thread like a month+ ago? , didn't know there was so many replys.)

[tim_n]

In the past month we've had some huge and ugly beetles, tons of daddy longlegs and the entire population of ugly b**tard spiders (10ft+ - I may be exagerating a tad...) seem to be moving in!

Cup and envelope always near the window... Nothing wrong with tossing them out of 1st floor windows - they always survive the drop and walk off with those nasty big legs...

yuck.

Unfortunately everyone in my family hates them. I work on the tim_n route of spider survival:

if(tim == tired)
{
  if (spider >= 1")
  {
    $newspaper/book = $spider;
  }
  else
  {
    $cup & overnight stay on the carpet = $spider;
  }
if (tim == v.young)
{
  $plastic bottle + water + worms + 2 weeks of experimentation = $spider;
}
else
{
  $pintglass + envelope = $spider;
}

(wooh00! first code tags used in one of my posts)

ps, both worms and spider lived in the water for 2 weeks without dying... odd really, I even released them and they all moved off to their own corner of the garden to get over their traumatisation...