Giant Spider Discovered
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 20th, 2010
A giant spider, between 5.5 and 6 inches across, one of the biggest spiders to have ever been found in the Mideast, has been discovered in Israel.
The arachnid lives in a trapdoored, underground chamber, and is only found in the dunes of the Sands of Samar.
Named Cerbalus aravensis, the scientists at Israel’s University of Haifa-Oranim, are credited with the find.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Mmmmmmmmkay.
The cryptid-appreciative side of me is thinking, “Very good. Another new species discovered.”
The arachnaphobe aspect of my personality, however, is a bit more vocal.
KILL IT. KILL IT WITH FIRE.
I still have nightmares about that chicken-eating spider, and now this? GAAAAAAAAAAA…..
I second odingirl. I may be a guy, and I may be excited about the new species, but I still want it dead. Oh and I want Odingirl to kill it for me. I hate spiders. EEEEEEK!
Calls to mind the movie “Arachnophobia,” doesn’t it??? Yech. 🙂
I don’t like spiders, to be honest, but I’m always glad when a new ANYTHING is discovered. Gives one hope in the possibility of unknown species and cryptids still hiding just out of sight being finally detected. Good show.
As far as I remember the “chicken-eating-spider” was nothing but a hoax, comparable to made-up horror-stories about the camel-spiders.
I just read the post about the chicken-eating tarantula. Fascinating that they might have been keeping the frog as a pet! Good thing I’m not a crypto-entymologist facing that bugger (well, technically that’s not a good pun, since bugs and spiders are diff)…Shiverssss
Remember folks—–
Spiders are our friends.
Spiders and snakes have always been my favorites , I don’t know why , this is a beautiful spider though , seems almost impossible that this large and this good looking of a spider has escaped detection until now.I like it.
But they forgot to mention the most important part: Is It Lethal To Humans?!?
I am not scared of most spiders. That one’s coloring kinda creeps me out, but the bush spider of Australia (you know the most venomous spider in the world) really scares me. I can’t show these pictures to my wife, but maybe I’ll send the link to her sister, also an arachnophobe.
Apparently the Sands of Samar are going the way of the Dodo. They have been shrinking from urbanization and currently cover about 1 sq Mi [source: wikipedia].
So it looks like our newly found gross-scary-angry-human-eating arachnid may be close to extinction.
BelieveInZombies, I’ll have to admit, while the spider makes me want to run screaming into traffic, the knowledge that the habitat of any new species has been reduced to 1 sq mile is even more distressing. The world is apparently determined to become a Walmart parking lot. 🙁
This is a beautiful creature.
God does great work.
I appreciate it, really, I do…. but I just want to spray my computer screen with bug spray after seeing that.
It’s sad that it could nearly be extinct though ):