At a Glance
- Funnel-web spiders are on the move in eastern Australia, a reptile park warned.
- Recent weather conditions are ideal for the spiders.
- No one has died from a funnel-web spider bite since the 1980s.
Australians are being warned that recent hot, wet weather has created perfect conditions for deadly funnel-web spiders to thrive.
The Australian Reptile Park posted the warning to its Facebook page this week.
"Because of the recent rains and now the hot days we're now experiencing, funnel-web spiders will start to move around; in particular, male funnel-webs as they start to venture looking for a female funnel-web spider to mate with," Dan Rumsey, a zookeeper at the park, said in a video accompanying the post.
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Severe thunderstorms over the weekend caused flash flooding and hail in parts of New South Wales and Queensland.
The rainfall combined with high summer temperatures have created ideal tropical conditions in which funnel-web spiders thrive, Australian Reptile Park keeper Jake Meney told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Rumsey said, "Funnel-web spiders are potentially one of the most dangerous spiders on the planet, in terms of a bite towards humans, and we have to treat it very seriously."
No one has died from a funnel-web spider bite since the 1980s, in part because of the reptile park's antivenom program.
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In the Facebook video, Rumsey encouraged adults to catch male funnel-web spiders and bring them to the park, where they are milked for the raw venom.
He said the ground-dwelling spiders are easy to catch. They can't climb smooth surfaces like plastic or glass. Rumsey suggested using a metal spoon or plastic ruler to guide the spider into a glass jar or plastic cup or container.
Of the 35 species of funnel-web spiders, the Sydney funnel web — Atrax robustus — is the deadliest, according to Australian Geographic.
They tend to live in rainforests and wet scrub forests, but they can venture into private gardens. They like dark spaces, so they have been known to crawl into shoes and laundry baskets left outside.
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