Halloween blog: spider science

Science - Pete Wilton | 29 Oct 10. With Halloween almost upon us we thought we should give you a scare of the eight-legged variety. So I asked George McGavin, of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, about scary spider encounters and why arachnids deserve gasps of wonder along with our yelps of fear. OxSciBlog: What has been your favourite encounter with a spider? - George McGavin: My favourite encounter has got to be when I found the goliath bird-eating tarantula ( Theraphosa blondi ) when filming Lost Land of the Jaguar in Guyana. We went out after dark to scour the forest close to base camp - after several hours we had not found anything and I was beginning to think that we'd never find one when Bruds, one of the rangers, radioed to say he had found a likely burrow. Sure enough the burrow was occupied by a large female which I was able to coax out using a blade of grass as a lure. Once in the open I blocked the hole with my machete. The spider was the size of a soup plate and although equipped wth half inch long fangs, their main defence is to flick tiny harpoon-like hairs in the face of any attacker. This she did with great enthusiasm and the air was soon filled with her abdominal hairs. They got in my face, eyes and throat but I was not going to be deterred. When she had calmed down I gently picked her up to show to the camera. She was a real star and even leapt off my hand towards the cameraman - a great performance! OSB: In evolutionary terms how successful are spiders?