Tag Archives: Tarantulas

They may send shivers down the spine of arachnophobes, but not all spiders are the stuff of nightmares. From dazzling dancers no bigger than a grain of rice, to velvet-coated rarities that look more like toys than terrors, these eight-legged wonders prove that beauty comes in the most unexpected forms. Here are some of the world’s prettiest – and most …

Four newly described species of tarantula have been given their own genus, thanks to the record-breaking length of their genitalia. Appropriately, they have been named after Satyrs, the Greek mythological part-man and part-animal figures known for their large male genitalia.  “The males of these spiders have the longest palps among all known tarantulas,” says Dr. Alireza Zamani, a researcher at …

Researchers have just identified four new species of tarantulas whose genitals are so long they had to make a new biological classification for them. Meet the Satyrex ferox, S. arabicus, S. somalicus, and S. speciosus. They hail from the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa and are so different from their closest relatives—on both the morphological and molecular level—that …