More horrendous spider stuff. One of the guys at work found this humungous house spider on the side of a fence post. I don’t know quite how, but it has damaged one of its legs, which is twisted under its body and caught under a splinter of wood on the post:
That is a 4-inch post, 9½ centimetres in new money. The spider’s head and body are about 2 cm long, about ¾ inch, the same as Monday’s Segestria – but the legs give it a tip-to-tail length of a good 7 cm, or more-or-less 3 inches. And that is not stretched out either; I think it would hang over each side of the post if it did that. Female house spiders tend to have larger bodies but shorter legs. Also, it is generally the males that are out and about in the autumn looking for a mate, and this one is definitely a male.
Interestingly, right on the opposite side of the same post was a pretty stretchy harvestman too. Like spiders, harvestmen are predatory arachnids, but the usually have very small bodies and tremendously long, skinny legs.
OK, I think we’re about done with big scary spiders for now. Below is a nice moth I discovered on the side of the warehouse. The moth is again, a couple of centimetres long, but I can’t get a positive ID on it. It is very similar to the large ranunculus I found down here on 12th October last year, although this one is pretty faded by comparison and lacks the little orange highlights. It is certainly a related species though, maybe the dusky brocade Apamea remissa.
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