Watch a funnel-web shedding its exoskeleton
8 April 2020
Image credit: Australian Reptile Park
Watch closely.
This video of a funnel-web shedding its exoskeleton, captured by arachnologist Samantha Nixon, is extremely rare, not to mention, creepy.
Despite having worked on spiders for over five years, Samantha says she’s never seen anything like this.
The funnel-web is one of the world’s most deadly spiders, able to kill a human in under 15 minutes.
There are around 35 species, but the most commonly known is the Sydney funnel-web (Atrax robustus), which is found in both suburbia and bushland in an area bound by Newcastle to the north and Illawarra to the south.
“This is normally the deadliest spider in the world, but right now he’s totally vulnerable until his exoskeleton hardens,” Samantha says.
