Goliath bird spider of Venezuela has some competition for the title of the world’s most horrifyingly huge arachnid

Why do they inspire such horror? Why is it that humans generally agree on the notion of two legs good, four legs good, six legs bearable, eight legs bad (and no legs also bad, for that matter)? There are all sorts of explanations — most of which centre on our evolutionary past as we evolved on the savannah — for why, when we discover that a rain spider (Palystes sp) has emerged from behind a picture to sit placidly on the wall above our beds, we shriek, break out in hives, collapse in a heap etc etc? (I have rescued many rain spiders from the house over the years; I do not believe in killing them and I am very slightly less scared of spiders than the average human being. However, this is a delicate operation involving a jar and a sheet of cardboard, and may involve random flailing of limbs should the spider escape too soon.) The subject that triggered all of this, of course, was Sydney’s fabled funnel-web spider, the world’s deadliest. If you’re interested in a close-up view of a funnel-web, take yourself along to Sydney’s Wildlife World to observe one safely ensconsed behind glass. It is a frighteningly large and fat thing — not hairy, like a tarantula — but still appalling in its own special way. Which is oddly comforting, because you would expect a dangerous spider to look the part, not like that pathetic little apparently innocuous violin spider. I once met a woman who was on crutches nine months after being bitten on the leg by a violin spider, surely the only arachnid ever to feature in a double page exposé in Huisgenoot.