New Guinea’s Giant Fighting Spider

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 269, 14 November 1945, Page 10

New Guinea’s Giant Fighting Spider

A giant spider, which came out fighting, provided exciting moments foi Australian soldiers in New Guinea recently. Staff/Sgt. L. Orchard, of Naraeoorte, had the fright of his life, according to a letter by a friend. He took up the floorboards of his tent for a clean-up and saw what looked like a strip of white velvet lying over a groove in tlie ground. He lifted it, and then dropped it very quickly, saying that there was a spider under it. “A chap named Hinchley,” said the letter, “got a long pair of electrician’s pliers and grabbed the spider by a leg. It came out fighting mad and spitting yellow venom at all and sundry. I have never seen anything so horrible and fearsome. “He was black and very hairy. The head part of his body was an inch and a half long and the stern part two inches long and solidly built. His legs were nearly as thick as a lead pencil, with fleshy pads like a dog’s and sharp claws at the end of the pads. He had a red shield on his chest that looked like a crab shell. “When Hinchley grabbed the spider, ‘Blue’ got a kero, tin and some flywire and dropped it in the tin, putting the wire on top. It tried to spit venom at us through the wire, and, hanging on to the wire over the tin, his leg-span nearly covered the tin. “We took it along to the entomologist at headquarters and he nearly went mad with joy. Ho told us it was the best and biggest specimen lie had seen, that it had the largest poison sac he had seen, and that the venom was deadly—one bite and one would have 20 seconds to make a will. The spider belonged to the Funnel family (tho same family as the trap-door breed).”