The headline says, “Giant spiders the size of rats make comeback in UK after nearing extinction, RSPB says“. Nah, I know these spiders. That’s Dolomedes. We call them fishing spiders here in the colonies.
Fen raft spiders starting to appear on the Dyke networks of the Lower Waveney Valley. This one was battling the wind even on this sheltered Dyke line. @suffolkwildlife @WaveneyCott @BBCCountryfile @HeritageFundM_E @SWTCarltonMarsh pic.twitter.com/pbMh8oGC2W
— Suffolk Wildlife Trust North East Reserves (@SWT_NE_Reserves) April 9, 2024
They are large spiders, but not as big as rats…unless you’ve got nothing but stunted, runty, starveling rats out there in the UK, scarcely big enough to put onna stick.
I’m surprised that they (the spiders, not the rats) were endangered — they seem to be doing fine here, in a part of the country with lots of wetlands that get some protection (but not enough) because they’re a haven for game birds. It’s good to hear that Dolomedes is making a comeback, though, in part because the zoos are raising more spiders.
That looks familiar, that’s how I raise my spiders. I hope they have many more vials than that, if they’re hoping to repopulate the whole of Britain.
I don’t think even minuscule UK rats would fit in those vials, you know.
Typical journalists. The article says they can get as big as a man’s hand, which is correct I suppose if you measure the spider from the tips of opposing legs (my lack of biological knowledge is betrayed here – what’s a spider’s “foot” called?).
So since a rat also can be as big as a man’s hand then the spider is the size of a rat.
Using that logic the spider can be as big as a hand grenade, or a dumb-bell.
What’s the largest and/or heaviest thing that will fit in a man’s hand? The spider is as “big” as that.
We have fishing spiders here in Vermont, which are indeed nice and big, being quite leggy, but no competition with most of the rats I’ve met. They cover a good bit of real estate but they’re not very meaty.
Interestingly, I usually see them clinging to the swimming raft at the lake, and have always called them “raft spiders” without knowing they might actually be called that somewhere else.
Big compared to what? Size is after all very much relative. Bigness and smallness especially..
But awesome arachnids here.
These spiders aren’t going to be going one-on-one with rats anyway. Water voles might try to make a snack out of them, if they get tired of eating grass and leaves. People usually mistake voles for rats.
I bet the one “battling the wind” looks awesome, but with the Nazi Social Network (NSN) blocked here at my house, I can’t visit the linked image. Ah well.
We have rats of all sizes in the UK. The bigger ones we elect to parliament.
I remember an old Night Gallery episode featuring a man trapped in his bedroom with a giant spider. It was all in his mind, probably the same as those UK spiders.
I understand they are talking about Dolomedes plantarius which is not present in the US, I think, and not the much more common Dolomedes fimbriatus, which is.
@cartomancer #6:
I’ve just this minute heard that one of the worst rats of all, the old-fashioned double-breasted rat, once suggested to Liz Truss that the Tories should sail a nuclear sub to Liverpool Docks and plug it into the grid to show the proles that nuclear power is safe.
I can’t help but think that Putin must have communicated this priority usage of the UK’s nuclear deterrent to him via a haunted top hat.
The video and photos are even more useless in determining size than the peculiar graph in the next post. I would guess they have been threatened because of the extensive, centuries long project to drain the fens, meaning far fewer wetlands. That is being reversed in a few places, so there are once again suitable habitats. Now to read the linked articles to see if they say.
Huh, interesting that the video says the size of a mouse or a palm, while the written piece says rat and hand. But the written piece also reckoned the drainage of the fens only goes back to the industrial revolution, which is just wrong; while windmills were replaced with steam engines then, the windmills had been draining wetland fens for centuries to varying effect. There is some evidence the Romans may have tried some drainage, but the large scale projects started in the 17thC under contracts from Charles 1, they had initial success, but the peat sank as it dried out limiting the amount of land they could keep permanently flood free.
So they’re spiders of unusual size? Inconceivable!
As a Britisher I can say we we are a bit screamish about such things. We definately arn’t Australians used to nature trying to kill us.
@11. Jazzlet : “Huh, interesting that the video says the size of a mouse or a palm””
Palm tree or palm as in part of the hand? One the size of the largest palm tres would be a very large spider indeed! Of course, both the plants and the members of the mouse family vary in size themselves.
Of course in a room full of spider experts I would not wish to mix up my dolomedes varieties, but I did think it amusing that English ones are rafts spiders that fish, while the American ones are fishing spiders that hang out on rafts.