The creepy crawly thread.....

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mikewint said:
just teasing, diddy, you're lucky to be alive. those claws on the hind legs can rip open a belly like a knife. the boxing kangaroo "trick" is just them doing what they do naturally, close with and try to kick the enemy
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This one was tame enough to let us docents into the enclosure without worry, so I don't think it would have seriously hurt me, but those hind feet really are nasty.
 
No one's doing creepy crawlies so i'm back
The giant wood spider, big enough to catch and feed on birds from Japan to australia
 

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The top photo is actually two very small ones. The angle of the photo makes them look much larger than they are. The bottom one also is a manipulated photo. Camel Spiders do not get that big. That is a photo shopped photo and nothing else.

I lived with them for 14 months when in Iraq. We would catch them and keep them in a terrarium. We even put a scorpion in there with them one time and the scorpion killed it pretty quickly.

While they are frightening, they are harmless to humans. They do not attack humans or large animals. The stories about them are all nothing but urban legends that soldiers have told to scare new soldiers coming down range.

The middle two pics are also not actually from "Camel Spiders". I believe the left one is from a Brown Recluse (I have actually been bitten by a Brown Recluse...), as I saw it on a Brown Recluse website. The other one, I am not sure about it, but it certainly is not from a Camel Spider.

Camel Spider Urban Legends:

1. They are huge.
The Largest species only grows to 5 in (from tip to tip of longest leg)

2. They are venomous.
Almost all species of Camel Spider have no venom, with the exception of one species that only lives in India.

3. Camel Spiders spray the victim with an anaesthetic venom that numbs the victim and then they prey on their flesh (to include humans).
They do not have this "spray" and they do not prey on animals larger than themselves.

4. They got their name from disemboweling camels.
Absolutely not true, just another story told by an older veteran soldier to the younger soldiers.

This is an actual Camel Spider bite:

Camel Spider Bite Picture
 
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Eagle, thank you for catching that, i had assumed that the bites had become infected and the resulting infection had caused the tissues to become necrotic. i went to a brown reculse site and found the same pics. as to the last pic i had assumed that it had been posed with a dead spider. i have removed all three photos
 

No need to remove them. It was still an interesting post.
 
i intended to be realistic, i knew that most of what had been reported were gross exagerations, we did the same thing to FNGs in vietnam. i'll post some brown recluse spiders and reuse correctly
 
mikewint said:
i intended to be realistic, i knew that most of what had been reported were gross exagerations, we did the same thing to FNGs in vietnam. i'll post some brown recluse spiders and reuse correctly
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I remember the stories I heard before I went to Iraq about the Camel Spiders.

I was told they would spray a camel abdomen and then bite a hole into it, then lay their eggs inside. The babies would then hatch and eat there way out!

We were also told they would spray you and then you would wake up with half your arm gone!

I believed all of them! After a few months of living in the desert, I realized they were all urban legends. Still scary and ugly looking creatures though. No wait, they are not ugly, they are FUGLY!
 
as i pointed out in the second post we have them in the US (southwest) and mexico where we callthem wind spiders

The brown recluse was mentioned so here it is. a small brown spider, not scary at all until you see what its bite can do. also called the violin spider for the violin-like marking on its thorax
 

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Looks scary enough to me, but then again I have been bit by one. Ever since then I have suffered from Arachnophobia.
 
Now the brown recluse venom, contains at lest 8 different substances which are cytotoxic (kills cells by destroying their membranes) and hemolytic (destroys Red Blood Cells) because of the tissue damage the victim's own body mounts a massive immune response which can spiral out of control.
1. Day 1 a pinprick barely noticeable until several hours afterward
2. Day 3 the diagnostic sign: the red-white-and blue lesion
3. Day 5 massive tissue necrosis and gangrene
 

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fiddlebacks! they were really big in oklahoma when i lived there. they are all over the us but pretty plentiful there for some reason...and my boss got wacked by one. thought he was going to lose his arm to the bite.
 
found this little guy making a web outside my kitchen window at home, didnt notice just how colourfull he was untill i viewed the pictures
 

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