Rare Creepy Crawler: Super-Sized Spider Discovered
Imagine a spider about the size of a standard-sized CD! Researchers have discovered a rare super-sized spider.
Once thought to be extinct, the first Nephila komaci spider was first found in an old museum collection in South Africa in 2000. A few years later, another specimen was found at a museum in Austria. No other specimens were found until two females and one male were found in the Tembe Elephant Park in Africa. The discovery is the first new Nephila species since 1879.
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There are more than 41,000 spider species currently known to man. Nephila spiders, the largest of the web-spinning spiders, also make the largest orb webs. This particular giant orb spider weaves webs of 
golden silk as large as three feet wide! With a leg span of 4 to 5 inches and a body length of 1.5 inches, the female Nephila komaci spider is about five times larger than her male counterpart.
According to the researchers, the is probably endangered, because the spiders only known habitat in the Maputaland coastal forest, is rare. The findings, Discovery of the Largest Orbweaving Spider Species: The Evolution of Gigantism in Nephila, have been published in the journal PLoS ONE. Photos are also available in the report.
Orb weaver spider photo Fir0002
Nephila komaci spider figure Matjaz Kuntner and Jonathan A. Coddington
