A new bigger and more dangerous version of the world’s deadliest spider, the funnel web, has been identified in the land down under – and it even has longer fangs and more venom
A bigger and more dangerous version of the world’s deadliest spider has been discovered by boffins in Australia. The Newcastle funnel-web spider was named after the port city, 100 miles north of Sydney, it was first found in.
The record-breaking 9.2cm arachnid, nicknamed “The Big Boy”, was caught in the wild and presented to the Australian Reptile Park near Sydney last week. Fans of the eight legged creatures were thrilled by the discovery while arachnophobes had yet another reason to avoid the land down under.
Compared to the normal 5cm funnel-web spider, the Newcastle variation is 9cm long. As well as a bigger body, the new species has longer fangs and a larger venom load – making it even more dangerous.
Spider enthusiast Kane Christensen alerted researchers to the size of the spider and was rewarded with its scientific name – Atrax christenseni. He said: “I just helped them find the species and they rang me and said would they be able to name it after me?
“That’s just one of the biggest honours you could ever get. The sheer size of the males, compared to the males of the other Atrax species is simply astounding. The first thing that stood out was just their sheer size. They are stupidly big compared to other Sydney funnel-webs around.
“There are some quite easy-to-distinguish morphological features in these ones … but just knowing that’s not good enough, so I had to contact the museum and send some species there and that’s when all the analysis gets done and it all gets sent around.”
Conventional knowledge up to know indicated there was one species of Sydney funnel-web spider living in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state.
However, boffins have now identified three species: the true Sydney funnel-web, the southern Sydney funnel-web and the Newcastle funnel-web. Toxicology expert Prof Geoff Isbister said the the science community has been aware of bigger funnel-web spiders existing for about 20 years.
He told Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “These spiders have always been here; we’re just understanding now that they’re slightly different.
“[Bites from] the two new species have been treated with funnel-web [antivenom] in the past. They just weren’t called those species then, and it works absolutely fine.
“The funnel-web antivenom is very effective as long as it’s given very soon after the bite, in an hour or two. For the last 45 years … there hasn’t been a death from a funnel-web bite.”
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