Afghan mega-spider bit dog to death

[Lancer]

Got any spider stories?

I walked out my front door last night and right through a web. I turned around to inspect and found a big spider, bigger than a silver dollar right above the hole my head made. I mean yuck, I hate spiders and this was a close call. I went after it with a broom, knocked it down and stomped it and completely cleared out its web. Took a pic of it first tho, but don't have it to post cuz the wife has the camera somewhere. Anyway, at least it didn't kill a pet like the one in the story. I don't have a pet but still.

'Camel spider'. Reason enough not to go to that part of the world.

The only thing I don't get about this is why the Brit Army didn't send someone over to kill the thing for the wife of a trooper.

Afghan mega-spider bit dog to death

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/campaigns/our_boys/article1617741.ece

By JOHN TROUP

Published: 28 Aug 2008

A SOLDIER’S wife has told how her family quit their home after a spider from Afghanistan killed their dog.
Lorraine Griffiths, 37, said the creature appeared when Paratrooper hubby Rodney, 32, returned from Helmand.

Pooch Bella died after a bite from the huge camel spider which is still on the loose.




Care worker Lorraine said: “It was the size of a palm. I think it hitched a lift with my husband. He’s back out there now, but I’m petrified of spiders and I cannot live in that house until it’s gone.”

Lorraine has left the four-bedroom Army property in Colchester, Essex – with children Cassie, 18, Ricky, 16 and four-year-old Ellie-Rose – and is living with her mother.

She said: “Ricky was in my bedroom, went into the drawer under my bed and something crawled across his hand. He saw a huge spider and screamed to Cassie.

“They tried to corner it, but it was too big. They poked it with a coat hanger and the spider bit it.


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“The dog came in and barked. The spider hissed and Bella went running out whimpering.”

Eight-year-old Bella was taken ill after the encounter and had to be put down. The RSPCA and Army staff have been unable to find the invader – which can grow up to 6ins, run at up to 10mph and lives in desert regions. Iain Newby, of Essex’s Dangerous and Wild Animals Rescue Facility, said: “It’s venomous, but would not kill you.”

The Sun told in June how British soldier Graeme Boyd, 24, needed seven operations after being bitten by a camel spider in Iraq. His arm swelled to five times its normal size.

[Aeson]

I caught one of these (or something that looked exactly like it) a few years back and asked poly OT what the hell it was. It was only ~3 inches and didn't kill my dog though. Used to catch them around here somewhat regularly. Haven't seen one in years thankfully.

I generally like spiders. They keep to themselves, unlike the bugs they eat.

[Heresson]

I wuv spiders too. They are cute and cuddly creatures.

[DRoseDARs]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solifugid

Urban legends

Solifugae are the subject of many urban legends and exaggerations about their size, speed, behavior, appetite, and lethality. They are not especially large, the biggest having a leg span of perhaps 12 centimeters (5 in). They are fast on land compared to other invertebrates, the fastest can run perhaps 16 kilometers per hour (10 mph), nearly half as fast as the fastest human sprinter. Members of this order of Arachnida apparently have no venom, with the possible exception of one species in India (see below) and do not spin webs.

In the Middle East, it is widely rumored among American and coalition military forces stationed there that Solifugae will feed on living human flesh. The story goes that the creature will inject some anaesthetizing venom into the exposed skin of its sleeping victim, then feed voraciously, leaving the victim to awaken with a gaping wound. Solifugae, however, do not produce such an anaesthetic, and they do not attack prey larger than themselves unless threatened. Other stories include tales of them leaping into the air, disemboweling camels, screaming, and running alongside moving humvees; all of these tales are dubious at best. Due to their bizarre appearance many people are startled or even afraid of them. This fear was sufficient to drive a family from their home when one was discovered in a soldier's house in Colchester [2]. The greatest threat they pose to humans, however, is their bite in self-defense when one tries to handle them. There is essentially no chance of death directly caused by the bite, but, due to the strong muscles of their chelicerae, they can produce a proportionately large, ragged wound that is prone to infection.

Venom controversy

While the absence of venom in Solifugae is a long-established fact[1], there is a single published study of one species, Rhagodes nigrocinctus, carried out in India in 1978 by a pair of researchers who did histological preparations of the chelicerae, and found what they believed to be epidermal glands[3]. Extracts from these glands were then injected into lizards, where it induced paralysis in 7 of 10 tests. While this study has never been confirmed, and while other researchers have been unable to locate similar glands in other species, this particular species does appear to possess venom, although it is not known if there is any mechanism for introducing it into prey (recall that the researchers manually injected it into lizards).

[BeBMan]

Obviously it was an AQ spider

[Darius871]

Thanks a lot Bush

[Alinestra Covelia]

Yeah, my friend lived in South Africa for most of his childhood and their house had these everywhere. They're not massively huge - about the size of a human hand at absolute largest. He described them as being flesh colored and with 10 legs (I think he meant eight legs and two pedipalps).

He said that as a kid he would wake up in the night and go to the bathroom for a wee, and these would be on the corridor floor and every so often he'd step on one by mistake and it would scurry away. He said the bites were painful but nonvenomous - you just put a band-aid on it and you were fine.

They were fast enough to occasionally catch mice, and they had powerful painful bites, but that was it. The other thing he said was if there was light, they would head to patches of shade, so they would run straight towards your shadow. This could be disconcerting but once they got there they usually chilled out.

[Lancer]

Spider Fighting...in the Philippines!

[Aeson]

I've had them hiss at me, for lack of a better word. Weird sound... not sure how they make it.

And those pedipalps are freaky. I had one in a glass mason jar, and it couldn't climb up the sides with it's legs. So it takes those two things, and climbs up the side of the mason jar using them only.

[Lancer]

Wonderful. How did you handle it Aeson? I tend to go after spiders with something that give me some distance, like a broom. When I'm done they don't tend to climb anymore. How did you motivate it into the jar?

[Dinner]

I never got the whole hysteria about camel spiders. They're not that big and just look like a hairy tan colored spider.

[CrONoS]

[Aeson]

I was a bit scared to be honest. I didn't have the top on the jar because it couldn't run up the sides, and was looking at it to figure out what it was (without the distortions of the mason jar, which means my face down by the opening. To see that thing climbing up at me was a bit awe inspiring. The really scary thing was how it was trying to run up... and it figured out that wasn't working and changed tactics.

Don't remember specifically how I caught it. I usually use a thin piece of cardboard or paper (like a piece of junk mail). Then either "herd" it into the container with the flat piece, or just plop the container over whatever I'm catching, then slide the sheet underneath. I catch lots of bugs and spiders and put them outside, so am pretty good at it.

Though every once in a while something completely astounds me with their skills... this was one of them. I do remember that I missed it by by about 3 feet my first try. Just so much faster than I was expecting. It may just be 10mph... but something that size that is FAST. And it can keep at it for quite a ways, at least 15-20 feet in one burst. Lots of spiders are pretty quick, but can only cover a couple feet at time.

--------

Another more recent occurance where I'll admit something I was going to catch got the better of me... I was laying in the hammock I've rigged up in the front yard, and I noticed something moving around in the water feature. It was some sort of rodent, about the size of a squirrel, but looked like a mouse with big triangle shaped ears. Kangaroo mouse maybe... never seen one before. It hiding in the rocks at the drain.

I got a bucket and a stick. Was just going to make it run into the bucket by proding it with the stick. Wasn't much room for it to go anywhere else. Well I poked it a few times gently, but it just kept backing into the rocks. So I removed a few of the rocks and t ried to pry it out instead. After a few attempts, with it squirming back into the rocks... it just jumped. Right over the bucket, right over the side of the water feature, 6-8 feet in one jump (about 3 feet of height). So that's why I figured it was a kangaroo mouse. But it didn't look like the kangaroo mice in google images so I don't know what it was.

[Dinner]

Those six legged wind scorpions were kind of cool though.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Lancer
Spider Fighting...in the Philippines!

That kid has some serious skills