owlice wrote:Nitpicker wrote:I'm not so worried about the legs. It's the fangs/teeth/toxins that scare me. Snakes, sharks, crocodiles, stonefish, blue ringed octopus, box jellyfish, fruitbats, dingos, feral koalas, etc, are all on the spectrum, but I've come so close to being bitten by a funnel web so many times, that I have a special kind of fear reserved for big, black, hairy, aggressive, menacing ground spiders, that can take a whole can of insecticide without even changing their stride.
How many cans of insecticide does it take to make one of these things change its stride, please? I'm planning to go to Australia next year and want to make sure I'm suitably armed.
Nobody picked me up on the feral koalas?
As for the insecticide claim, this story comes from my early childhood in the late 1970s, before the antivenom was developed. One morning, I was innocently munching away at my breakfast cereal, when I saw a funnel web approaching me from across the other side of the room, slowly, but steadily and with purpose. I put down my bowl. By pure chance, there happened to be a can of insecticide (of some sort, details have been lost) on the table next to me. I started spraying the stuff at the spider, but it continued to walk towards me, backing me into a corner, with no change in its gait. By the time my back was up against the wall, the spider was white with spray, and the can gave out. At this point, the spider began to rear up in classic strike pose, and I took the empty can and squashed it dead. This is just one of the funnel web stories that has so obviously traumatised me. The rational reality is that very few people get bitten by funnel webs and none have died since the antivenom was developed.
Chris, a funnel web's fangs can penetrate fingernails and could easily penetrate parts of that hazmat suit. At best, it might serve as a convenient body bag, in which to sweat away one's last few moments.