Mysteries, Chemtrails, Aerosols :: Mysterious NZ

[solohawke]

i found this spider while cleaning up in the garden, it is quite large, approx' 50mm diameter with hairy legs and adomin with a rich brown shiny thorax.
hopefully someone knows what this is.
looking forward to replies.




<a href="http://s620.photobucket.com/albums/tt285/solohawke/?action=view&current=largespider2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i620.photobucket.com/albums/tt285/solohawke/largespider2.jpg" border="0" alt="large nz spider2"></a>

[solohawke]

[solohawke]

did a little digging and this seems to be the type.

Black tunnelweb spider (Porrhothele antipodiana)

[Crakka]

That's an impressive looking specimen solo! Is that web all around it? I'd assume a Tunnelweb lives on or in the ground and traps insects in a web around its tunnel entrance or something?

We used to get a lot of really big wolf spiders about that size where I worked after leaving school that we used to creep out all the females (sorry ladies!) at work with by letting them crawl up our arms :D I also lived in Avondale for over a decade and we used to find quite a few Avondale spiders under a timber stack we had on the property - quite a few of which actually ended up in some big spider movie (Arachniphobia?). The "spider lady" from the DSIR as it was known then used to visit us periodically to see how many we'd found for her.

[solohawke]

yes that is its web,
i found it under a sheet of iron buried under some long grass, i turned the iron upside down as a check for the expected creepy crawly usually found in these situations, you should of heard the language when i discovered this thing just sitting there.
i never knew we had spiders this size in nz.
i have seen the movie you mentioned and know they used the avondale spider,
but this in my opinion is a step up from them. This looks like that spider the avondale species mated with in the movie.
if you see a sheet of webbing near a whole, get a stick a gently touch the web, you may get a nice surprise of what lives in there.
wasps hunt these by triggering this kind of response and they sting them when they come out to eat whatever is on the web, then its their turn to have the crap scared out of them (if they feel fear). the wasp has armour, the spider doesn't. people have seen wasps dragging these things back to the nest, usually a hole in the ground. (this spider was fouind near a wasp nest i destroyed earlier in the year)
i do prefer the spider to the wasp though, i have been stung but never bitten by one of these. but they do bite if provoked and i have read it's much like a wasp sting.
How big were the wolf spiders crakka? i have read they get really big.

[Crakka]

Wolf spiders were about 50-60cm across including legs but they seem bigger when they're walking up your bare arm! A few Avondales were bigger than that though ;-)