In a forest of Ecuador, a roughly 1-foot-long creature with spiky “eyelashes” perched on a plant and waited. The venomous animal was hunting, but what came along next was not a meal. Scientists encountered the patient predator and captured it. It turned out to be a new species. Researchers wanted to study a group of […]
Researchers trekked through the dry and rocky landscape of north Western Australia, using ultraviolet light tools to scan for creatures that might be in the area. That’s when they spotted a yellow, eight-legged arachnid and plucked it from a drainage line. The team was searching for scorpions in the Pilbara region, according to a study […]
A family in Australia received an unwelcome home visitor last week: an eastern brown snake, one of the most dangerous serpents in the world. The highly venomous snake was found curled up in the underwear drawer of a 3-year-old boy, as shown in a rattling social media video shared by a pest control specialist known […]
With fangs that could pierce a human fingernail, the largest male specimen of the world’s most venomous arachnid has found a new home at the Australian Reptile Park, where it will help save lives after a member of the public discovered it by chance. The deadly Sydney funnel-web spider, dubbed Hercules, was found by chance […]
John Heenan knows the terror of feeling a sting on his foot, then looking down and seeing two bright red puncture wounds about an inch apart and a massive rattlesnake slithering away into tall grass. It was a summer morning in 2017, and the 74-year-old horticulturist was carrying a box of fruit in a Marin […]