See the Absolutely Massive Spider This Man Found in His Home (and What He Did With It)

Finding a spider in your home is an experience that most people are all too familiar with. First, a moment of panic, then, a moment of fear! Depending on the spider (and the disposition of the human in question), the spider will either be removed, squashed, or sometimes photographed! Recently, one man in the UK discovered a MASSIVE spider that sparked a whole conversation online with how big it was and how nobody could quite identify it (for some reason). Here’s the wild story of the massive spider that the man found in his home, plus what he did with it.

Danny Higgins Found a Massive Spider in His Friend’s Home

Danny Higgins is what you would call an “amateur spider identifier.” Essentially, his friends and family ask him to identify the spiders they find in their homes. For Danny, this little passion soon turned into something nearly viral when a friend sent him a photo.

The photo in question was of an absolutely massive spider that was having the time of its life sitting on the crown molding of his friend’s home. The spider is so large it actually looked like it was some time of computer simulation and not a real creature! For some scale, the crown molding and the folds of the curtain under the spider at the bottom of the photo can help.

Once Danny saw the spider, however, he knew that he was a little out of his depth. Based in the UK, Danny knew that this spider probably wasn’t something that he was familiar with. After throwing out a couple of ideas and none of them sticking, he decided to post it to the local group he was a member of, the British Spider Identification Group on Facebook.

“Trying to ID this for a friend, was thinking maybe Male Eratigena SP, any suggestions welcome, thank you in advance!”

Danny Higgins

Bringing in Some Backup

After posting the photo of the spider to the internet ID group, the questions came pouring in. Danny’s first guess, a male Eratigena, was a shot in the dark because it looked somewhat similar. In the UK, it is more commonly known as the Giant House Spider, and as this was a giant spider in the house, the name clicked! The only thing, however, is that the spider in the photo didn’t really look the same as a GHS. In the UK, there aren’t a lot of spiders that can get that large, and with the GHS being among the largest (along with the Cardinal and a few orb weaver species), it was time to call in the experts.

Expert Opinions

The comments from the spider identification experts started pouring in, hoping to provide some answers or learn a bit about the context:

• “This is not a native spider. Where was the picture taken? Is anyone able to safely capture the spider?”
• “Bought any bananas recently?”
• “I’d say it looks like a huntsman of some sort. I’ll happily take a free pet if you can catch it”
• “Sparrassidae, huntsman, native to Australia, bananas of cargo maybe.”

The key? A combination of the collective wisdom of the entire group. They were correct, this wasn’t a native spider to the UK, and it certainly wasn’t a GHS! From what the group could tell from the limited photo, what they were looking at was a member of the Sparrassidae family, more commonly known as Hunstman spiders.

Huntsman spiders aren’t native to the UK, but they can occasionally hitch a ride to places all over the world, usually through something like cargo or bananas coming from Asia or Australia. The culprit had been identified!

Thankfully, they aren’t considered a dangerous species, although they can bite and have venom. To a human, however, their bite isn’t deadly. Even more, they will only bite a human when forced to and will try to run first.

Calling in the Proper Authorities

“*UPDATE* Environmental Health has been called and have arranged to pick this big boy up, thank you to everyone for your suggestions and advice! Keeping a safe distance and a watchful eye on him until then, may the odds forever be in my favour”

Danny Higgins

Now that the spider had been identified, it was time for next steps. Initially, Danny called his local authorities, namely Environmental Health, and was looking for some help handling the huge spider. They were going to take care of it for Danny… until he realized that their version of “taking care of things” wasn’t what he was hoping for – they were going to kill it!

“2nd *UPDATE* after finding out Environmental Health would kill it, I’ve cancelled their visit and have spoken to a good friend who specialises in homing spiders, didn’t sit right with me that I’d be responsible for its death.. so he will be picked up very shortly.”

Danny Higgins

From the comments, it was clear that this spider had either gotten here accidentally on some cargo, or even was an escaped pet! Danny didn’t want it to be killed (especially in the case that the latter was true), so instead, he was going to have a friend come pick it up.

The Hunstman Problem was officially solved!