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Biggest funnel web spider ever handed into reptile park revealed (www.9news.com.au)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Prior to Hemsworth arrival at the park, Hercules was their biggest spider, his body spanning 7.9cm long.

But now, Hemsworth has blown the competition out of the water, measuring in at 9.2cm long (from leg to leg).

A regular sized funnel webb spider (pictured left) compared with Hemsworth, (pictured right). (Instagram/Australian Reptile Park)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They found one with 10cm leg span in 2016 though ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-35378879

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Spiders are milked using a pipette which sucks up their venom. This is done once every week as the spiders can get exhausted from too many milkings.

The park needs between 200 and 300 spiders to milk every year, and needs 3,000 milkings to produce enough venom for the antidote.

The venom is sent to laboratory Bio CSL where it is injected in incremental doses into rabbits.

The bunnies gradually build up antibodies in their blood, which the laboratory extracts to make a serum.

Those poor bunnies, we're basically biting them with a funnel web constantly to harvest their bile.