| Author: Peter Del BosqueFounder of Socialeaf, Peter's bio can be found by clicking on this Google+ link.
With over 1000 different species of the huntsman spider, living in both tropical and temperate regions, they are generally in close proximity to humans. They can be found in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Australia, and many of you may have had an encounter with these impressive spiders on one or several occasions. Although these spiders can be rather large where some have a leg-span that can reach between 250-300mm (10-12in), and look very intimidating, they aren’t known to aggressively attack humans as does the Brazilian Wandering Spider (also called the Banana Spider).
The specific huntsman spider in question is the Sinopoda scurion. Its name ‘scurion’ comes from a popular Swiss based company called ‘Scurion’ who makes cave headlamps. It was found in a cave near the well-known Xe Bang Fai cave in Laos by Peter Jäger who heads the arachnology department at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt. Dr. Jäger made mention of other cave dwelling huntsman spiders that had been discovered before , but all had been found with both pigment in their exoskeleton and several pairs of eyes ranging from 1-4 pair. To find a huntsman spider with no pigment and no eyes was groundbreaking.
Dr. Jäger believes that finding this particular blind huntsman spider can help us to better understand how the species can adjust to a dark cave setting. We would be able to calculate the time it takes for this process to occur. Furthermore, since this blind huntsman spider is only found in a tiny area, it can also help scientists and researchers determine the extent of habitat loss by both tourism and land exploitation practices.
For more interesting articles, check out the links below.
No comments:
Post a Comment