New tarantula found is as big as your face

It's big, it's hairy and it's venomous. It is a new tarantula named ‘poecilotheria rajaei’ that has been discovered in Sri Lanka.

With a leg span of eight inches (20cm) and enough venom to kill mice, lizards, small birds and snakes, the crawler is covered in markings of gray, pink and daffodil yellow, according to Sky News.

"It can be quite attractive unless spiders freak you out," Peter Kirk, editor of the British Tarantula Society Journal, told the ‘New York Daily News’.

Even scientists studying the newly-discover spider admit to being surprised by its size: "It was slightly smaller than the size of a dinner plate," Ranil Nanayakkara, co-founder of Sri Lanka’s Biodiversity Education and Research, told the ‘Daily News’.

science.nbcnews.com says tarantulas have been the subject of considerable study lately. Researchers are still trying to determine how or if tarantulas use silk from the spigots on their feet. And in 2012, a scientist reported discovering nine species of colourful Amazonian tarantulas in Brazil.

The newest tarantula, part of the poecilotheria genus of arachnids (sometimes called "pokies" or tiger spiders), is a tree-dwelling spider. All the pokies, known for being colourful, fast and venomous, are found only in India and Sri Lanka.

"They are quite rare," Nanayakkara said. "They prefer old trees, but deforestation has reduced the number of trees, with the result that they enter old buildings."

The spider was first seen in 2009 after the discovery of a dead male on which scientists noticed a pink abdominal band.

"To establish if this really was a new species to Sri Lanka and the world, the authors carried out surveys in the northern part of the island to establish the spider’s distribution and ecology," the scientists write in the British Tarantula Society Journal.

"But a female or any other specimen of the same type was not found. However, a female and several juveniles were found after several days of searching,” the journal said.

It's not yet known how rare the newly discovered tarantula is, but there is concern that habitat destruction is causing their numbers to dwindle. Northern Sri Lanka, where the tarantula was discovered, was ravaged by a civil war until a few years ago.

"It demonstrates that wildlife continues to survive whilst we are in the throes of conflict and that they can adapt to  changing environment," Kirk told Sky News, "but we risk destroying the habitats of species new to science and condemning them to extinction before they are even discovered."

Soldiers nabbed with deer and rabbit flesh
 
A sergeant major, three soldiers and an army cook have been nabbed by the police at Waan Ela in Kanatalai with carcasses of two deer and a rabbit that they had killed and the T-56 automatic rifle used to kill the animals, the ‘Island’ reported.

Police said the five army men, attached to the Ganthalawa army camp, were transporting the carcasses when they were arrested on Saturday. Police also seized an army cab transporting the dead animals.

Pawn shop manageress and cashier arrested

The Kadugannawa Police have arrested a woman manager and cashier of a jewellery pawn shop located at Danthure, Kadugannawa and three others in connection with a robbery of Rs300,000 in cash and jewellery worth over Rs 4 million , reports Ceylon Today.

According to the police, the robbery was committed by the suspects according to a plan hatched with their friends at the pawn shop. All the stolen cash and jewellery were recovered by the police from a secret compartment in the motorcycle of one of the suspects.

The three unidentified men who entered the pawn shop last Thursday have been identified as employees. According to a complaint received by the Kadugannawa Police, after frightening the staff, the unidentified men collected Rs358, 185 in cash and about Rs4 million worth of jewellery.

 




 

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