Badass animals

SYDNEY FUNNEL WEB SPIDER

In America, we have a lot of spiders creeping about the country. We even have some poisonous ones, like the infamous Black Widow and the lesser known but more prolific Brown Recluse. And sure, nobody likes being poisoned, but the fact that my dad is still around today is fairly good proof that someone can survive a brown recluse bite, albeit with a monstrously swollen face for a little while. American spiders are just as fucking creepy as spiders in other parts of the world, but relatively harmless in comparison.

Australia is a different story, almost a completely opposite story. If America were the original Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies, Australia is 558 minutes of Sauron beating the everloving sweet shit out of everyone he sees with his giant mace, pissing on the corpses, then tossing them into Mount Doom. You see, everything in Australia has the desire and the potential to kill you, including the spiders. Especially the spiders, the Sydney funnel-web spider in particular.

The Sydney funnel-web is widely regarded as the single most dangerous species of spider in the world. If it were just the most dangerous in Australia, that by itself would be impressive in a horrific sort of way, but it clearly decided to go the extra mile. An extra mile paved with sheer terror and the tears of children.

Some spiders like to lurk around in human houses, where it’s cozy and warm. Some spiders are intrepid adventurers, taking their chances out in the sprawling countryside. The Sydney funnel-web is actually pretty fond of both, ensuring that the word ‘safe’ retains absolutely no meaning for you. Like the Visa card, it’s everywhere you want to be. Unlike the Visa card, it has large fangs just itching to inject venom into you.

About those fangs, they’re pretty serious fucking business. They’re strong enough to easily pierce through a fingernail, so if they get into you you’re definitely going to notice. If not from the initial bite or the full envenomation they throw in for free, then from when you have to physically pull them off of you. You see, they like to get a good grip on you and just bite away, and their fangs get so far into you that you can’t just shake them off.

Also, those fangs have a pretty large chance of finding their way into your flesh. Most spiders are content to sit in a web and share habitats with those crazy, lumbering humans, but the Sydney funnel-web don’t play that shit. These spiders will actively seek you out, pursue you, and destroy you. Yes, The Terminator is apparently based off a true story.

Don’t worry though, you probably won’t see them coming. You see, they’re mainly nocturnal. So you have a notoriously aggressive spider that lives in houses and delivers a full payload of deadly venom in each bite it delivers, of which there are always many. And it stalks you in the dead of night! It really seems like the title “Most Dangerous Spider in the World” should be secondary to “Absolute Biggest Dickhead in the Animal Kingdom”.

Thankfully, if you’re awake they shouldn’t be too hard to see coming, as they’re a few centimeters long and sort of shiny. If you are bitten, they’ve got an antivenom specifically for you, and as a result nobody’s died from a bite in awhile. That won’t stop the pain, vomiting, or muscle spasms, but at least you won’t die. Probably.