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Bugs & Pests Christine's garden Gardening Miscellaneous

Very Scarey Spider – ID help

Not quite gardening but he must have come inside from the garden. I woke up this morning to see this very large spider above my head on the ceiling! I’m generally not scared of spiders. They leave me alone and I stay away from them so I have a fairly healthy relationship with them. But this is just a bit too much for me … and frankly, I’m terrified of this guy (or gal?). The spider is about 15 cm in length and has been sitting in the same spot since I woke up this morning. Unfortunately my camera and macro lens “went away for the weekend”, so this is the best shot I can get until my camera comes home this afternoon, hopefully with some muscle to help me get rid of this spider. Well … not rid of it but moved to a more acceptable (to me) location!

Does anyone have any idea what kind of spider this is? I’ve spent the better part of two hours trying to ID it via info on the internet. The best I can come up with is that it is a common house spider, baboon spider or huntsman spider, all of which are apparantly not dangerous to humans.

We had quite a storm here last night. The garden is a mess this morning with branches and debris everywhere, so I’m guessing she was somehow forced inside by the wind or dislodged from her web. To me the spider looks black, but from the photographs it appears to be a dark brown, not black at all. You can click on the photos to see the enlargement.

[one_half]Scarey spiderScarey Spider[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Another viewHuge spider[/one_half_last]

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What are Solifuges?

HaarskeederHave you ever in your life seen anything so weird as this?? Found this on our outside deck! Had to do some research on this creature – Hannes calls it a haarskeeder!

Members of the order Solifugae,  usually referred to as solifuges, solifugids, solpugids or by an assortment of vernacular names (e.g., camel spiders, false spiders, haarskeerders, jagspinnekoppe, jerrymanders, roman spiders, sun spiders, walzenspinnen, wind scorpions), are a diverse and fascinating, yet poorly known, order of specialized, mostly nocturnal, cursorial hunting arachnids notable for their massively powerful two-segmented chelicerae, voracious appetite, and tremendous speed (Punzo, 1998).  They constitute the sixth most diverse order of arachnids in number of families, genera, and species (Harvey, 2002).  Many solifuges are able to run at extremely fast speeds (53 cm/sec) for short bursts, but like most arachnids, cannot sustain such rapid locomotion for long periods.  Solifuges vary from a few millimeters to 10 centimeters in length and look superficially like stout, hairy, fast-running spiders with an extra pair of legs (leg-like, sensory pedipalps, held out in front of the body). 

Sunspiders are not really spiders. They are a very important animal group in Namibia, which has the highest diversity of sunspiders in the world, and many peculiar endemic species. According to current theories, Namibia is also the place from where sunspiders evolved. As part of the research project, three scientists from Germany are in Namibia to collect sunspiders for research. 

Reference from:- http://www.solpugid.com/Introduction.htm