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Originally Posted by Skunks
Rather dramatic at that angle.
This little bugger was hanging around the porch of a beach cottage in South Carolina. Hard to tell from the photo, given there's no object of scale or anything like that, but he was 2-3" from legtip to legtip.
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You mean "she".
That's a banana spider, or a golden weaver (I remember hearing that it's one of only three kinds of spider in North America that does not have white webbing, and one of twenty or so in the world). My parents live in St. Augustine, and they have these things all over the place. You can walk around the house and see at least two or three females on any given day.
The females there can have a legspan about as big as my hand, at least 3" wide and 5" long. I swear you could harpoon them and roast them on the bar-b-q. The males are much smaller, about the size of an old half dollar coin (I'd guess 3cm for the non-USA's).
I once watched one of these molt its exoskeleton. A flap opens up on the back, and it squirms out the back. I had seen a few skins. Whe I saw one hanging with it's legs pointing forward and a split on its back, I thought it was injured from a bird or other bug. Then it started to... well, crawl out of its skin. I called my brother, and we sat and watched. Quite cool.
