Why the hell would someone want to buy a funnelweb spider for?

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/inside-australias-creepiest-industry-dozens-of-deadly-funnel-web-spiders...

Apart from being one of the world's true deadly spiders, they are being sent to areas where the anti-venom is either not available or difficult to obtain in an emergency.

Male funnelweb spiders are usually on the prowl in January looking for a female to mate with and any days with hot and dry weather is what leads them to venture indoors because spiders like humidity. This, in turn, leads them to nipping away at people's toes and the fangs on these spiders can puncture through toe nails.

As a resident of Sydney, I go to lengths to make sure they cannot come inside. There's millions of them in Sydney and just about everywhere east of the Great Dividing Range you can find at least one of the 30-odd species of funnelweb that live in Australia.

They are the deadliest spiders in the world. Don't buy them and more importantly, don't play with them. Any spiders that are found, where possible and if safe to do so, should be put in a thick plastic container and taken to a spider drop off point. See the Australian Reptile Park website (link below) for details.

https://reptilepark.com.au/venom-program/spider-first-aid-drop-off-points/

Nutters playing with dangerous toys, agree the sale of these creatures should be banned.

Could be natural selection at work.

Often deadly creatures have a Red warning mark: (Redback Spider, Coral Snake) (must mean a Redback is more lethal than a Funnel-web?)

Redbacks are extremely common, and their webs are an unmitigated mess, no beauty in them whatsoever.

Although redbacks can kill, it is quite rare for it to happen. Insect spray is quite effective against them.

Never seen a funnelweb - they usually inhabit Sydney's northern suburbs, an area I have no reason to visit.

Where I live we have some venomous snakes: red-bellied black snake, brown snake. I think there might be tiger snakes but I've never seen one.

Most snakes prefer to mind their own business and will only bite if harrassed. The tiger snake however can attack for no reason at all.

At least our bees are docile, unlike in some other countries.

There might be some truth to that remark, as the red mark on the spider is normally very small. It gets wider when the spider is annoyed by something, usually a human shaking its web with a stick or poking the spider itself.

Funnel webs are definitely far more toxic though, and because they don't always squirt venom on their first bite they tend to bite repeatedly.

In Sydney, brown snakes and funnel web spiders are the animals to avoid. But if bitten, a constrictive bandage on the bitten limb followed by a call to 000 will usually do the trick but the important thing is time - there's not a lot of it after a bite. Up in the Blue Mountains there are death adders but they are notoriously shy and seldom hang out on the hiking tracks where they know people will be.

I saw today that the Australian Reptile Park are urgently in need of funnel web spiders for milking their venom. Apparently, they are a major, or perhaps only, supplier to the anti-venom maker.
Harold

Yep, they collect it and pass it on to the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL Ltd) who then make the anti-venom.

Ebay and other sites should just be community-spirited and remove ads where non-domestic animal trade is taking place. If we wait for the Government to act then it's just an accident waiting to happen. Next it'll be dingoes, taipans and box jellyfish.

It's interesting how man/most mammals are 'wired' with arachnophobia & herpetophobia!
For me it's hyperherpetophobia & diminished arachnophobia - not a good thing, as was nailed by a spider recently!

Sydney's lower north shore is infested with funnel web spiders. When I bought and renovated a Federation house there, hardly a day would go by in summer when I didn't encounter at least one in the backyard. Funnel webs need shade and damp to survive. As I cleaned up the backyard I would kick over stones and old bricks and would find the black buggers lurking underneath more often than not. The large ones are quite aggressive when disturbed. One hot day I was startled to find one submerged at the bottom of the dog's water bowl. I used to caution my wife to beware of leaving wet washing outside in the basket.

As for red backs, I often find them in the edge folds of my metal garage tilta-door, and they rarely have a red back. Baygon deals with them quickly.

As a child I lived with my parents at Georges Heights in the 1950s and the place literally crawled with them. We had moved home with two cats but they both died within a couple of weeks because they would chase any funnelweb spider they saw. There was no antivenin then but Sydney University was studying the venom. My mother was from the bush and would not tolerate spiders anywhere. Usually she would eliminate any spider with a hand operated pump spray but she bravely caught funnelwebs in glass jam jars for the researchers.

I saw on TV the piece by the Reptile Park but was amused when the bloke said that funnelwebs are slow moving and cannot jump. As I recall the damn things can run quite fast over short distances and can certainly jump forward a few inches to strike at whatever is in front of them. I would never hold a jar in my bare hand to place it over a spider. My mum had a jar with an 18" ruler taped to to the side as a handle. There was a ring of tape, sticky side out, around the ruler to stop the spider from running up the ruler. Once the jar was over the spider, a small piece of cardboard was slipped under the jar to cover the mouth. Then the whole lot was inverted over to drop the spider to the bottom of the jar. The spider would then run around madly for a while but once it stopped moving a tin lid would be put on very tightly. The ruler handle was cut off and the jar would then be placed with others in a big biscuit tin and the lid of that would be replaced. She never had any escapees and must have caught dozens of them.

Knowing how dangerous these spiders are it is beyond me why anybody would want to keep one as a 'pet'.

Its amazing what you find on the Farm. I have had a black snake, recently evicted that decided to over winter & have a nest 4ft from my feet, in this building. Last straw was when she apparently got locked out, & when the door was opened, she zoomed in to resume her position in the nest. (photo on Facebook). Now its only a Blue tongue under the shed slab. Its getting tame, one day last week it decided to keep cool on the suction side of the air con compressor & today decided that hosing the garden was drinks time: Albeit there is water close.

I did have a chip at ABC a couple of days ago. She was carrying on about filling the Bird Bath. Well elevated bird bath's are useless for Fauna that is ground based. The birds will still drink out of low dishes. Even the local Goanna wont climb a bird bath.

Brown snakes tend to bite first & ask questions later. Thanks to a mate a Black in a tree hit my arm. I believe that it was the combination of a 4" camera bag strap & a "Silk weave" shirt that stopped the fangs doing more than leaving bruises. I did run over another with the Ag bike, it tore a rail track across my leg which bled profusely, so no venom would have got in, although that was probably the last thing on its mind as the heavily lugged bike wheel had grabbed it & was making its life a misery. That is what caused the ripping. The snake was obviously not terribly elastic.

I would never hold a jar in my bare hand to place it over a spider.

Neither would I.

News today that the Australian Reptile Park has been successful in breeding them:

QUOTE: Funnel web antivenom was developed in 1981, before which 13 deaths had been recorded as a result of the dangerous spider’s bite. No fatalities have been recorded since that time.

"This is an exciting time as it’s the first time the Australian Reptile Park has bred funnel web spiders and we are getting some interesting results," Kane Christensen, the park’s head of spiders, said.

"Out of 80 pairings, we have only had three instances of fighting which is in contrast to popular belief that female spiders eat the males after mating."

One does not want to kill every spider. The "Huntsman" (Assassin) often wander in just before it rains. One normally traps them & evicts them, after they have eaten all the bugs around a light.

Re the Huntsman: These are regular visitors to my house - but how they get into a house sealed up against mosquitoes is a mystery at times especially when they appear upstairs.

Huntsmen have their own terrors. I have seen one paralysed and being carried off by a wasp to lay it eggs on. So another reason that they come inside is to escape such predators. An outside huntsman used to hide between overlapping sheets of fibreglass sheeting of a shadehouse.
They are very large and mean looking but relatively easy to trap with a container and something flat to slide underneath. Only if the weather is hot when they quicken up considerably are they particularly hard to catch.