“When I turned on the light, I couldn’t quite understand what I was seeing,” Piotr Naskrecki said about his encounter with the Goliath Birdeater Spider in the rainforest of Guyana.
Okay, this is not sappy spider blogging – this is Creepy, Enormous, NIGHTMARE spider blogging. This specimen has a leg span of up to a foot, 2 inch long fangs and a fist-sized body. The Goliath also has hardened feet that make it sound like horses hooves when it walks.
It gets better:
When Naskrecki approached the imposing creature in the rainforest, it would rub its hind legs against its abdomen. At first, the scientist thought the behavior was “cute,” he said, but then he realized the spider was sending out a cloud of hairs with microscopic barbs on them. When these hairs get in the eyes or other mucous membranes, they are “extremely painful and itchy,” and can stay there for days, he said.
I’m never going there, nope, never.
Read more here at Live Science.
Photo credit: Piotr Naskrecki
Gunsmoke and Knitting 