A larger, more venomous, longer-fanged species of one of the world’s deadliest spiders has been discovered by scientists in Australia.
Nicknamed “Big Boy” and living just 100 miles north of Sydney, the Newcastle funnel-web has thrilled arachnologists – and struck fear into arachnophobes.
By arachnid standards, it is a whopper. While a normal male has a 2.5cm body length, the Newcastle variation, named after the port city where it was found, is more than 9cm long.
Last week, a record-breaking Newcastle funnel-web spider was caught in the wild and presented to the Australian Reptile Park near Sydney.
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It was named Hemsworth after Chris Hemsworth, the Australian actor best known for playing Thor in the Marvel series of superhero films.
“The sheer size of the males, compared to the males of the other Atrax species is simply astounding,” said Kane Christensen, a spider expert who first noticed the large proportions of the arachnid.
Until now, there was thought to be just one species of Sydney funnel-web spider living in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state.
However, experts have now identified three different species: the true Sydney funnel-web, found in and around the city, the southern Sydney funnel-web, which is found most commonly in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, and the Newcastle funnel-web, the largest and most formidable of the three.
The bigger the spider, the bigger its bite, said Prof Geoff Isbister, director of the Department of Clinical Toxicology at the Calvary Mater Hospital in Newcastle.
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“There are two things about a spider being more dangerous – one is its size because it’s more likely to inject a larger amount of venom, but also the potency of the venom differs,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
However, for now, scientists believe they can continue to use the same antivenom to treat bites from all three species of funnel-web spiders.
Prof Isbister said: “[Bites from] the two new species have been treated with funnel-web [antivenom] in the past. They just weren’t called those species then, and it works absolutely fine.
“The funnel-web antivenom is very effective as long as it’s given very soon after the bite, in an hour or two.”
There have been no human deaths from funnel-web bites since the 1980s, when an antivenom was developed.
Prof Isbister said the Newcastle funnel-web’s venom glands were bigger and its fangs were a lot longer, which “could equate possibly to a deeper [penetration] even through a glove.”
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Mr Christensen has the distinction of having the newly-identified Newcastle funnel-web named after him – its Latin name is Atrax christenseni.
The different species were identified after a group of scientists, from the Australian Museum in Sydney, the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change in Germany and Flinders University in Adelaide, subjected various specimens to DNA testing.
Their findings were published in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution on Monday.
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