Post #13731

Giant Hunter: The largest spider in the world. A monster the size of a pizza from the caves of Asia What's worse than a huge hairy spider the size of a large plate? A huge hairy spider about which science knows almost nothing! Meet the giant huntsman spider, winner of the battle of sizes, who lives in caves on the edge of Asia. But this is not certain. We're not sure where we'll meet him next, so... The giant huntsman spider, or heteropoda maxima, is one of those creatures that you want to get to know only through articles and pictures on the Internet. Because the title of the largest spider in the world was given to him for a reason: the leg span of an adult female reaches 30 centimeters. 30, Karl! It will be larger than your palm, larger than the plate you eat from, and even larger than the famous goliath tarantula. This is an absolute record. For comparison, these spiders of yours, which run along the walls and scare you with just their appearance, grow up to 5-7 centimeters from leg to leg, maximum. So, the huntsman spider is 6 times larger! That's right, the patter of little feet! The fateful meeting of scientists and hunting spiders occurred, by scientific standards, quite recently - in 2001. For a monster of this size, it is very strange to hide from human sight for so long. The same goliaths, for example, were discovered in shaggy 1804. But if you study in more detail the lifestyle of the giants, then everything falls into place. It's not that people didn't search well. They were just looking in the wrong place. Today, the officially confirmed habitat of hunters is Laos, or more precisely, several local caves in the province of Khamunan. Spiders were recognized as endemic to the country, but given the rather scarce data on this species, it is quite possible that the monsters live somewhere else. This is subtly hinted at by the appearance of the hunters. If you look closely, in addition to the huge legs and hairy carcass, you can see several pairs of eyes. What a surprise, almost all spiders have eyes! But wait, giants live in caves. And in local species, as a rule, evolution takes back the organs of vision over time as unnecessary. That is, spiders do not live underground, but at the very entrance, where sunlight still reaches. So why don't they go outside?.. It is not easy to judge the presence of representatives of this species in the area, even despite their colossal size. This is because hunters do not weave webs - the main identifying marker of the presence of an eight-legged monster. They actively hunt: they wander along the walls of caves, wait, sit in ambush and attack. Fast and deadly. Monsters infect their victims with poison, after which they pump digestive enzymes into the mortal carcass. They say that the venom of this spider is not dangerous for people. Of course, we won’t check, and we don’t advise you to either. The menu of the largest spiders includes both insects and small vertebrates, such as frog