From ninemsn via wtf_nature, this bird-eating spider. The photos are alleged to have been captured in a backyard in Atherton, in north Queensland (inland from Cairns).
The spider: a Golden Orb Weaver. The bird: a native finch called a Chestnut–breasted Mannikin.
I hereby call for a Truth in Advertising campaign for Australian tourism.
“Down Under: If the sun doesn’t get you, the wildlife will.”
“Where the bloody hell are ya? …. oh. I’ll get a rope.”
“Queensland. Beautiful one day… perfect the HOLY FUCK WHAT WAS THAT?”
Your suggestions?
[link to lyrics, for those who can't access the video: Deadly Animals, by the Scared Weird Little Guys. ~Lauredhel]
Australia: Where even the cute widdle platypus has a venemous spur.
(Can I just add that when I first moved here, we lived in the Blue Mountains, and about three days in a Funnel Web spider dropped on my head. A week later my father sent my brother outside to play with a ‘slow worm’ that turned out to be a Red-Belly Black snake. Three weeks after that we were evacuated because of a bushfire. We came back after a day, and that weekend my father was badly bitten by sand-flies and had a severe allergic reaction that lasted a week. I still remember the under-current of fear that first year)
keris last blog post..Potential for Freakout
Cripes… I’m terribly glad that European wildlife is so tame!!! The spiders here are enough to give me the shivers, something like that in my garden would have me heading for the airport in seconds!!!
@MissPrism: That song was hilarious!!!
Emily Ss last blog post..Pro-life campaign for animals
I had the exact same thought as MissPrism!
*sings* Come to Australia… you might accidentally get killed!
That Golden Orb Weaver is bigger than any I’ve seen down here (near Sydney). You may be safe(r) with an Opera House jaunt, Emily S.
“Come to Australia, not even Steve Irwin could survive our wildlife!”
::ducks::
You’ll never, never know … just how many cockroaches live under your sink.
I love living in the UK. Nothing bites and the flies are so pathetic that if you do the great australian salute, nine times out of ten you actually hit the little beggars!!!
[...] I didn’t think there would ever be a day that Hoyden About Town and Dead Dog had anything in common. I always enjoy Hoyden, (and now they’ve fallen in love [...]
My suggestion is that Australian bloggers rig the internet somehow so that my computer will automatically shut itself off rather than display pictures of spiders that big.
Talk about a mother-effing need for a trigger warning…
—–>is now twitching just at the thought of spiders like the one above existing.
As a child, growing up in the NT, I once walked into a ‘golden orb’ and literally got a face full of one of those spiders. I leapt backwards, tumbled and landed between a couple of rocks- brusied, but thinking about nothing other than the spider.
…Which thankfully stayed on its web!
I make sudden claim for a modicum of macho status in amongst my sensitive bloggering…
Armagny – all I can say is…
fffffffffffuuuuucccckkkkk
well, and, glad you didn’t get eaten by the spider.
Aieeee, horrible!!?????
Australia—because we didn’t just export our convicts.
rpgs last blog post..The drugs don’t work
And this is why I never never never never never want to go to Australia again (been twice, both to relatively safe central Sydney).
Oh gosh, the cockroaches. I still have nightmares about the cockroaches in Australia. *sobs*
Australia … the deadliest place on earth!