German cops hunt HUGE ERECTION-inducing SPIDER A supermarket in the German town of Bexbach was evacuated last Friday after an employee spotted a potentially-deadly Brazilian spider legging it from a crate of bananas. The eight-legged beast, described as "large, greyish" and "about 13 centimeters long", jumped from the crate and made good its escape under a shelf. A quick …
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From the article:
'Dr. Nunes said: ‘We found the toxin responsible [for the erections] and performed experiments using hypertensive rats which have severe erectile dysfunction. '
The first question being - how the hell do you know a rat has erectile dysfunction?
And back to spider - ye gods, the last time there was any spider that big it was clamped to Lis Slayden's back.
I used to live near a banana warehouse and from time to time we would spot big spiders in the area. I mean really big. We were always told they were harmless and indeed looking them up proved them to be so.
How accurate was the identification of this beast? Did somebody spot it briefly or did they get a photograph? I fail to see how a brief glimpse of a few seconds could result in an accurate identification.
I think it more likely that the spider in question would be one of the harmless banana spiders and it's also pretty likeley that it would fail to survive for long in the northern european climate.
You must be talking about Nephila clavipes, which is a very large garden orb weaver that is completely harmless. They're commonly referred to as banana spiders. I have no idea why.
It's unlikely that this spider would be found in a fruit box, as they just hang out on their webs and don't get out much.
The "banana" spider in the article is very likely to be a Phoneutria sp., which is sometimes called banana spider because it's so often found in banana shipping boxes. The phoneutria spiders don't make webs, and they like a warm and dry place to hang out. The shacks where banana growers leave the bananas to ripen is the ideal place.
.. what you can spot when you are wasting drinking time on a Friday afternoon
Also amazing that as they fled they could measure the beast as 13cm long.
What's all this centimetre business; these units do not exist officially, even in Germany. On the other hand they do recognise the Olympic sized swimming pool, well any size swimming pool actually.
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