Canon PowerShot G9
ƒ/2.8
7.4 mm
1/40
80

Anyone know the species?

It’s the largest spider I have ever seen in the wild.

The underbody looks like a totem pole of faces in full size.

32 responses to “Giant Radioactive Spider”

  1. Where did you see this? My hearty congratulations on not running like hell 🙂

  2. Wow! And the detail of the web (seen in the full size) is amazing).

  3. omg that thing looks nasty!

  4. Joie: about 10 steps from the front door, nestled in a bush.

    Here is the top side of this fella:

    Spider top

  5. I suffer from a massive fear of spiders and clowns. this one sent the chills…..

    Awesome shot

  6. what a beauty!

    !efatima – does that mean you can’t look at this then? 😉

  7. We have one in our garden, but it’s only about 1-1/2" across.

    1577 Spider in the Garden

  8. Better right outside your door than mine! Don’t really mind most spiders, but one this size is a bit intimidating! Thanks for the ‘up close & personal’ view…interesting!

  9. Very handsome!!

    I always wonder that it’s a pity that animals in the wild cannot see and appreciate themselves, their awesome looks…

  10. oh.

    avast’ye!!!

    Happy Talk like a pirate day!!!

    P-)

    Yaaaaaaarr!!

  11. Not what you want to run into on your mountain bike first thing in the morning!

  12. Well, the one kbaird posted is a St Andrews Cross spider, which are pretty common in & around Sydney (Australia) where I live. I was going to suggest that yours might be a St Andrews Cross when I saw the legs paired like that but when I saw the top of it I wasn’t so sure.

    Did it sit in the middle of it’s web with opaque zigzags in it’s web extending from it’s pairs of legs? If you blow on it or poke it does it bounce back & forth? St Andrews Cross spiders do that – if you poke their backs they do an amazingly quick move & suddenly appear on the other side of their web as if by magic (they don’t attack, they try to evade). If you poke them again eventually they start bouncing back & forth (like violent vibranting). It’s a defence mechanism to make it hard for the bird (that is obviously poking them) to focus clearly on them, therefore making it harder for said bird to eat them.

    If it is a St Andrews Cross then it’s fairly harmless. Big, but not aggresive and not dangerous.

    Seen on your photo stream. (?)

  13. BTW, with St Andrews Cross spiders, as with most spider species I believe, the female is about 10 times bigger than the male (which are often misidentified as babies), and quite often you’ll find a few males either in the same web as the female or with their own webs very close to the female.

  14. Sage – Yes on the vibration! It was a wild oscillation when my son got near. There were no zig zag lines on the web when I took the shot, but she just caught a fly today and there’s one…. I wonder if it that could be the mark of a meal.

    Alieness: just got back from seeing the play Treasure Island. Had to celebrate today in full style. And I have a full Pirate costume for Halloween this year. Yarrr! P-)

  15. Aye aye! a pirate costume for halloween!
    Yarr! |-)

  16. this one en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argiope_trifasciata , but the colors from your top side are different in the abdomen area.

  17. How big was this one?

    I’d click on the full size, but I’m scared of spiders and this is as much as I can stand…

  18. Alaskan king crab.

  19. A similar one showed up outside my front door yesterday. It’s over 2 inches long:
    Yellow Garden Spider

  20. With a little selective breeding, these could be yummy crab legs…

    Remember, tomatoes were poisonous green berries not so many years ago, before humans started messing with them…

  21. I didn’t know about the Tomato history… just knew the commonplace that they are a fruit and not a vegetable…
    ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato#Fruit_or_vegetable.3F )

    Will google about that!!

  22. this is such a beautiful capture!
    amazing image! 🙂

  23. Hehe…. 1 thread, 3 different species of orbweavers, hehe…. Orbweavers are pretty and pretty harmless too. 🙂

  24. Extraordinary Capture! You deserve another Buzz and Bug Award as seen in our pool

    ,Buzz and Bugz

    Please Tag Your Photo with BuzzNBugz

    The Buzz and Bugz Group

  25. nice one
    Extraordinary Capture! You deserve another Buzz and Bug Award as seen in our pool

    ,Buzz and Bugz

    Please Tag Your Photo with BuzzNBugz

    The Buzz and Bugz Group

  26. Great shot
    Extraordinary Capture! You deserve another Buzz and Bug Award as seen in our pool

    ,Buzz and Bugz

    Please Tag Your Photo with BuzzNBugz

    The Buzz and Bugz Group

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