Australia’s brown huntsman spiders are the fastest, according to a study, yet to be peer-reviewed, of 258 species.
According to the study, huntsman spiders can move at 3.59 metres per second.
More research is needed to confirm if there are other, faster species out there that have not been investigated.
For non-Aussies reading this, don’t be afraid, a hunstman spider won’t hunt you down and bite you though it might beat you in a race. It only eats insects.
I’m sure every aussie has had one run across their windscreen at least once whist driving. They come outta nowwhere, run straight past your face and disappear into god-knows-where while you’re doing 100 on the M1.
They will also sit in the corner of your bedroom ceiling and not move for 3 days straight.
Obligatory insurance company ad featuring everyone’s favorite spider.
Had one slooowly stick its legs out from where the dash met the driver’s side door one day while I was driving 100km/hr with the wife.
“Ok honey we just need to pull over for a second somewhere to sort something out 😬”
I unfortunately had the displeasure of one putting its leg in my ear. Not a great day.
The bedroom ones generally get a name, Bob, Fank, Margot, etc
Mine are Anslem. I forget why.
Anslem from Anheim was an Arachnid who dreamed of Arrakis. His mother was all joy because he was a boy, an apostasy sure to antagonise.
I was not planning on that little poem going the Frank Herbert route. All I can say is there might have been Spice in my coffee this morning. I suggest you get that huntsman a Stillsuit.
How utterly random. Love it!
And kinda flimsy too. I prefer to just leave all spiders alone, but if the wife or kids refuse to allow it I’ll catch inside spiders and release them outside - unless it’s a huntsman. IF you can even manage to catch them and wrangle them, by the time you get them contained they’ve usually only got 3 legs left so you’ve basically killed them anyway.
I would love to leave them alone but I’ve got a cat.
I feel like the intuition is to get the container close… Slowly… then snap it to the ground!
Don’t do this. They’re faster than you realise, and you risk crushing them, even when the gap to the floor is an inch.
Just go slow the whole way. They aren’t going to know to scramble through a gap once it’s smaller than their height.
I use a container with an opening big enough for maybe 3 huntsmen, I angle one side of it on the wall in front of the spider, then have a laminated a4 sheet that I rustle behind it to encourage it to run into the container. When it does I put the rest of the container against the wall and slide the a4 sheet in so I can move the container outside. Never hurt one doing this, but I’ve had lots of practice.
How on earth are you catching them? I just use a broom and with a bit of encouragement, maybe a little glass of red, they climb on and I just drop them outside. Only spiders I knock off inside are white tips.
You must have very classy huntsmen. A liitle glass of red? Are they partial to a cab sav, shiraz, merlot?
Very classy. A nice full bodied Shiraz in winter, Pinot noir if it’s a summer catching.
The bigger useful container you can find, the better, I’ve found. That way there’s less chance of hurting them when covering them to take them outside.
I have a plunger duct taped to a plastic container, it’s amazing for getting spiders and easily the best thing I’ve ever made. Highly recommended.
Haha yeah, I used to be able to do it in my younger days, but strangely as I’ve gotten older they’ve gotten quicker! Mostly I’ll just make a feeble spectacle and then say “oh no, it’s gone behind the fridge, I couldn’t possibly catch it now!” And then 9 times out of 10 we never see them again anyway. 😜
Dear Lord. So these guys are huge AND fast?? At least they’re not aggressive?
Unless you look like an insect, apparently not. Actively threatening their eggs might provoke a reaction. They don’t appear to be particularly dangerous, but I guess you’ll want to avoid the pain of their bite anyway.
The ones mentioned in the article, Heteropoda Jugulans and H. Cervina, are also not the biggest representatives of their family (Heteropodae) or genus (Sparassidae, which covers Huntsmen in general). That honour (?) belongs to H. Maxima, which can reach 30cm (1ft) leg span.
I’ve been bitten by one. For some daft reason it got into bed and I rolled onto it. Tiny ouch, massive itchy swollen reaction. More typical of me than it.
Spiders can potentially run 8mph? This is a fact I could have lived without knowing.
In short bursts, it seems. I don’t think that’s a sustained speed.
He noted that while 3.59 metres per second was the absolute top speed, about as fast as a human jogging, it was only for “a fraction of a second”.
“What we call maximum speed, is measured over very short periods of time,” he said.
Like dwarves, “very dangerous over short distances!”
So both faster and for longer than I can run. Bastards.
Fucking hell why did you post this.
Now crosspost to other communities, it shouldn’t just be us who suffer
Big spiders are so cool, watching them in the video in the article is almost mesmerizing honestly
