Just a week after a new funnel-web spider specimen was hailed as the largest ever found, arachnid experts have published a paper suggesting that there are actually three species of the world’s deadliest spider. That’s three more than I can handle.
In a research paper that saw seven arachnologists investigating countless funnel-web specimens over decades, the verdict is in, and — sorry arachnophobes — turns out there are three species of the Sydney funnel-web.
As well as the traditional atrax robustus AKA Sydney funnel-web that was commonly believed to be the only species, there are two other variants that differ in size, location, and potentially even deadliness.
The smaller of the two new species is the atrax montanus, which is almost identical to the robustus, except it lives in a much larger zone than just Sydney.
And then there’s the “big boy” species.
Dubbed the atrax christenseni, this relatively larger variant of funnel-web is named after the Australian Reptile Park’s volunteer spider milker Kane Christensen.
Since 2003, Kane has milked 36 funnel-webs a day in order to have enough anti-venom, and while doing this he observed how many of the specimens were as large as his palm — uncharacteristically large for the species.
Additionally, he noted to the Sydney Morning Herald that many people donating them were confusing some for the common huntsman spider, due to their monstrous size.
Thankfully for Sydneysiders these beasts mostly reside in the Newcastle area, resulting in experts nicknaming them the Newcastle funnel-web.
After DNA testing in Germany and microscopic analysis of the different sub-species, the researchers were able to confirm that there are three separate species of the spider. Thankfully, even though the classification is different the anti-venom for all three species remains the same.
However, there is reason to believe that the bigger variant of funnel-web is more deadly, due to producing more venom as a result of its larger size.
That said, thanks to Kane’s hard work milking the spiders, the anti-venom’s availability means that nobody has been killed by a funnel-web since 1981.
In other news, if any foreign nations with nuclear firepower want to blow Sydney off the map, I think that might just be for the best.
Lead Image: Canva.
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