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Australian Outback Town Invaded by Spiders
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by Jordan Yerman | May 7, 2009 at 10:05 am
336 views | 4 Recommendations | 3 comments
Bowen, Australia is inundated with an invasion of bird-eating spiders. While nobody's yet calling it an arachno-plague, pest-control companies are citing a big uptick in customer calls.
Bowen is an coastal town, about 700 miles north of Brisbane.
The eastern tarantula, aka "bird-eating spider", aka "barking spider", aka "whistling spider", is indeed toxic, but its bite is not fatal to humans.
While not deadly like other Australian spiders, the eastern tarantulas are venomous and can grow up to 6cm (2.4in) long with a leg span of 16cm (6.3in). Despite their common name, they do not eat birds, but can kill a dog with one bite, and make a human very sick.
Oh, and the eastern tarantula makes a hissing noise when agitated, so that should be suitably disquieting when faced with more than one of them.
If you live in the area, make sure to keep hands and feet covered when working in the yard, and watch your pets carefully for signs of illness, since these spiders' bites can be fatal to your four-legged friends.
Perhaps there's an opportunity here for a spider-vs-cane toad showdown.
(Thanks, Neatorama!)
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (3)
at 10:51 on May 7th, 2009
Arachnophobia Strikes Back!
at 01:50 on May 13th, 2009
umm, stumbled across this article.
first why waste time with such rot and even a story like this could be pretty cool for a little aussie outbackish township....
even if its about 1000klms off the east coast in the middle of the pacific ocean.
last time I checked (as I live in bowen) I didn't need a boast to leave the floating house..
but if your understanding of "outback" means a coastal community town, central north queensland with 11 beaches, and a jetty which houses the tug boats for some largish coal ships for export of one of our large resorces and currently expanding to tripple the output
then maybe Bowen is an outback town.....
oh yeah, we have "bird eating" spiders too, in fact they have been here before mankind moved in...
but then again if you condsider something that has always been...."inundated"
then yes we also have been inundated with these little 5cm spiders
the only difference between them and the 5inch ones we have here is the larger ones dont have the common name of "bird eating"
anyhow cheers
at 13:01 on May 15th, 2009
I corrected the location (I hate getting that stuff wrong, especially since I've been to Townsville many years ago, though I admit to not remembering driving through Bowen)... however, for the term "bird eating spider", I can't help you there- I didn't invent the phrase! But c'mon- "spider invasion" stories are pretty cool.