Shadow
10-18-2014, 12:14 PM
EEEKKK
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Piotr Naskrecki was taking a nighttime walk in a rainforest in Guyana, when he heard rustling as if something were creeping underfoot. When he turned on his flashlight, he expected to see a small mammal, such as a possum or a rat.
"When I turned on the light, I couldn't quite understand what I was seeing," said Naskrecki, an entomologist and photographer at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology.
A moment later, he realized he was looking not at a brown, furry mammal, but an enormous, puppy-size spider.
Known as the South American Goliath birdeater (http://www.livescience.com/46630-spiders-alive-exhibit-new-york.html) (Theraphosa blondi), the colossal arachnid is the world's largest spider, according to Guinness World Records. Itsleg span can reach up to a foot (30 centimeters), or about the size of "a child's forearm," with a body the size of "a large fist," Naskrecki told Live Science. And the spider can weigh more than 6 oz. (170 grams) — about as much as a young puppy, the scientist wrote on his blog (http://thesmallermajority.com/).
http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Dht9TFqT2uLyP6eaDCG3og--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTM4MztweW9mZj0wO3E9Nz U7dz01NzU-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_US/News/LiveScience.com/theraphosa4.jpg1413584886
************************************************** *************************************
Piotr Naskrecki was taking a nighttime walk in a rainforest in Guyana, when he heard rustling as if something were creeping underfoot. When he turned on his flashlight, he expected to see a small mammal, such as a possum or a rat.
"When I turned on the light, I couldn't quite understand what I was seeing," said Naskrecki, an entomologist and photographer at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology.
A moment later, he realized he was looking not at a brown, furry mammal, but an enormous, puppy-size spider.
Known as the South American Goliath birdeater (http://www.livescience.com/46630-spiders-alive-exhibit-new-york.html) (Theraphosa blondi), the colossal arachnid is the world's largest spider, according to Guinness World Records. Itsleg span can reach up to a foot (30 centimeters), or about the size of "a child's forearm," with a body the size of "a large fist," Naskrecki told Live Science. And the spider can weigh more than 6 oz. (170 grams) — about as much as a young puppy, the scientist wrote on his blog (http://thesmallermajority.com/).
http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Dht9TFqT2uLyP6eaDCG3og--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTM4MztweW9mZj0wO3E9Nz U7dz01NzU-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_US/News/LiveScience.com/theraphosa4.jpg1413584886