Giant Spiders anyone?

The largest spider in the world would be the goliath birdeater. It lives in the Amazon, can have legs reaching a size of 12inches. Pretty damn impressive.

I heard some collectors in the USA have actually had some shipped to them and are in the process of reproducing them for sales.


Goliath

Originally posted by Threadfall
If I remember my biology class well enough (And I surely MAY NOT, so don't take this for gospel) poor circulatory systems would also limit such animals' sizes.

Along those lines, this link discusses the largest flying insect ever known - Which had the wingspan of a large hawk. Some scientists believe that insects were this large only because in the distant prehistoric past there was more oxygen in the atmosphere, as the article discusses.

Another factor keeping creepy-crawlies small is the square-cube law, which basically states that if you increase the size of something by a factor of 2, you increase the weight of it by a factor of 8. Giant B-movie sized bugs would collapse under their own weight, in effect.

I saw this on the net a while back. I know it's not a spider, but it's interesting...

Enormous Bug

I think all relevant info has already been posted in regards to the OP. Would just like to add though that I've been somewhat of an insect enthusiast/entomologist most my life -- and have had a bit of experience hunting/keeping the bird eating spiders local to far north Queensland, Australia. So far I've found at least 10 different species over the years, 2 of the smaller rain forest spm's are possibly new species. One particularly interesting find though is a burrow I once came across, belonging to some species of bird eater, that was unusually larger than the average diameter of an adult's burrow. It was unfortunate that the spider itself was absent from the hole at the time, but from my experience I can safely say that the spider would almost definitely be larger than any of the known species in Australia -- and quite possibly around the same size as the Goliath Bird Eater from South America.

Note that this find was deep in the tropical rainforests of far north Queensland, in which I'm certain there are still thousands of species of insects/spider to be discovered. I'll have to make it a project of mine to find this spider and find out just how big it really is.

[edit on 12/10/08 by Navieko]