Rare tiny 'cupcake' spider discovery on rural property amazes Aussies
The Tassie local said that while he's used to 'creatures big and small' on his rural land, the bright orange spider 'was a bit different'.
A man’s encounter with a “crazy spider” resembling a “tiny cupcake” has shocked and amazed Aussies. The homeowner recently made the “seriously great find” in the yard of his rural Tasmanian home near the Freycinet National Park.
“I’m in the bush so there's lots of creatures big and small. I’ve seen many spiders of all shapes and sizes — this was a bit different though,” he told Yahoo News on Tuesday.
After stumbling across the roughly 15mm-wide, bright orange creature on the ground, the local snapped a couple of pictures before leaving “it to do its thing” in the bushland and nonchalantly going about his day.
Despite his calm demeanour, experts revealed to Yahoo the man had accidentally documented a “quite rare” and “very interesting” Australian orb-weaving spider called paraplectanoides crassipes.
“They don’t turn up all that often… however, they are known to science and well documented in the scientific literature,” Dr Michael Rix, principal scientist and curator of arachnology at Queensland Museum, said.
Paraplectanoides crassipes have a unique squat morphology and colour patterns, with females largely orange and males overall black, he explained. Females have a body length of 9-12mm, while males are just 2mm.
The species is not considered to be harmful to humans and also occurs in NSW, according to a paper written by late Hobart-born arachnologist Professor Victor Vernon Hickman.
“This is a small and enigmatic species, with a long-standing debate about its evolutionary development (phylogenetic) and taxonomic affinities,” Dr Rix said.
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Queensland Museum arachnologist Dr Robert Raven agreed, describing the small orb-weaver to “the spider equivalent of the face that launched a 1000 ships”.
“Wars have been fought over her evolutionary relationships,” he told Yahoo after sharing his glee that “she still lives in Tassie!” Dr Raven said in the past 14 years he has gone on 10 expeditions in Tasmania to search for spiders and has never seen a paraplectanoides crassipes.
“They’re rare, for sure,” he added. “They live in the grass so very easily hit by fire. The web is quite conspicuous so not easily missed. They are one of the ones about which I get very excited; and they’re quite distinctive.”
