A Midnight Beauty!

A Huntsman spider of the Rainspider species came to visit!

Our little dog Troy had an urgent need and Marian (my wife) opened the door so that he could go and do his business in the garden.
On her way back into the house, she saw this huge big spider sitting next to the door and she called me. He was obviously sitting there to catch lizards.
Let's see some more of this beauty!

Like I said, it was late night and the moon cast some ideal shadows to hide the hunter!

But we lit him up with our flashlight and if any person that is scared of spiders would see this, they would scream and run for the hills Lol

Amazing how this lamp casts a lovely butterfly shadow!

Now I told you that this guy is big and here I am holding a 500 ml bottle next to him with my one hand, while snapping with the camera in my other hand! His size here is about 3 bricks high.

They are nocturnal hunters that hide and sleep during the day and feast at night!

I so wanted him to lift his head, but he just stuck tighter to the wall as I breathed on him.
4 eyes at the top and another row of 4 eyes below the top row. Pity he was camera shy as I also wanted to show you his fangs! Lol

Here's more information about this guy!

"Huntsman spiders"

"Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Chelicerata
Class: Arachnida
Order: Araneae
Infraorder: Araneomorphae
Family: Sparassidae"

"Huntsman spiders, members of the family Sparassidae (formerly Heteropodidae), are known by this name because of their speed and mode of hunting".

"They also are called giant crab spiders because of their size and appearance. Larger species sometimes are referred to as wood spiders, because of their preference for woody places (forests, mine shafts, woodpiles, wooden shacks)".

"In southern Africa the genus Palystes are known as rain spiders or lizard-eating spiders. Commonly they are confused with baboon spiders from the Mygalomorphae infraorder, which are not closely related".

"More than a thousand Sparassidae species occur in most warm temperate to tropical regions of the world, including much of Australasia, Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean Basin, and the Americas".

"Several species of huntsman spider can use an unusual form of locomotion. The wheel spider (Carparachne aureoflava) from the Namib uses a cartwheeling motion, while Cebrennus rechenbergi uses a handspring motion".

Source of the sections above marked (""),
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntsman_spider

Note: All photos are my own, unedited and only cropped for uploading purposes.

So we left him to enjoy his hunting and went back to bed.These spiders are a great boon to our gardens as they control pests and bugs, and all kinds of other nasties - even snakes and mosquitoes. It is not a good idea to kill them, as they fear humans and will only attack when they feel endangered. Leave them and let them be on their way, and you will have a great pest controller.
If I see him again then he will deserve a nickname, and we might just call him "Rex" short for "T-Rex". Hahaha...

It seems that the power company here in South Africa forgot to stick to their loadshedding schedule, as the power to Cape Town was supposed to be cut off now.
That's why I have decided to post right now, as we don't know what's going to happen with the power cut offs later on today!

We hope that you have enjoyed the pictures of this magnificent animal and thank you for visiting a post by @papilloncharity

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