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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThis Wriggling Sac of Deadly Baby Spiders Has Australian Researchers Excited (ScienceAlert)
MICHELLE STARR
17 JAN 2018
You probably won't be surprised to hear that Australia is home to the world's most toxic spider.
It's called the funnel-web, it's aggressive, and its venom can kill an adult human in 15 minutes, a fact Australians get drilled into their skulls from a young age. And recently one man found the Aussie nightmare - a funnel-web egg sac in his very own backyard.
Instead of setting it on fire and running screaming (which would actually be really stupid because Australia bursts into flames with astonishing regularity), he did the sensible thing and notified his local reptile park - which was overjoyed to take it in.
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Interestingly, dogs, cats and other non-primates are much more resistant to funnel-web venom, and can survive 100 times the human lethal dose. (It's not clear why primates are so acutely affected, either, as spiders use their toxins to kill the bugs they eat, not people.)
To produce antivenom, the harvested venom is injected into rabbits. This doesn't kill or even harm the animals, due to that aforementioned non-primate resistance, but it does induce them to develop an antibody against the venom.
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more: https://www.sciencealert.com/sac-baby-sydney-funnel-web-spiders-australian-reptile-park-antivenom?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1
https://www.facebook.com/AustralianReptilePark/videos/10155867663242976/
Posted for the arachnophobes.
Orrex
(63,199 posts)Scarier and grosser than all the spiders in Australia.
annabanana
(52,791 posts)just Ew
trixie2
(905 posts)This is why I don't travel. Here is another Australian crazy thing.
canetoad
(17,149 posts)That's another Aussie thing