You have to hand it to the passerby who called the cops after hearing a chap yelling "why don't you die?" along with the cries of a toddler. On its own that's rather concerning, but less surprising when you learn this happened in Australia, where the majority of fauna seem set on cleansing humans from the continent. Police …

Kill it with fire! A bloke in Fresno, California, almost burned his parents' house down when he opted for a blowtorch to address the property's black widow spider population. The skittish house-sitter called the cavalry to the Woodward Lake housing development late on Tuesday. Twenty-nine firefighters responded and …

VideoSpiders can detect the Earth’s electric field, and use it to lift off and fly through the air, according to new research. The creepy creatures raise their legs and point their bulbous bodies to the sky before shooting lines of silk, using the material to float away in a gentle breeze. The process known as ballooning can carry …

An Aussie builder has endured the agony of being bitten on the todger by a redback spider for the second time in five months*. The 21-year-old who asked not to be fully named, for obvious reasons, said that lightning had indeed struck twice in “pretty much the same spot” when used a portable loo on a building site in Sydney …

Yet another British family has been forced to flee its habitat after an infestation of Brazilian wandering spiders smuggled itself into their nest on the back of a bunch of supermarket bananas. The Brazilian wandering spider's bite is so venomous it can leave males of many species with a painful four-hour long erection before …

Scientists have unearthed the remains of a "bizarre" monster sea scorpion which 460 million years ago prowled the oceans covering what is now North America. The remains of the 1.7m-long eurypterid Pentecopterus decorahensis were found in Iowa by a team led by Yale's Dr James Lamsdell. They reveal multiple forelimbs probably …

Caption CompetitionIn an act of supreme kindness, we are giving you another chance to win a 6TB Western Digital Hard Drive – in this week’s Vulture Caption Competition. Last week’s caption competition had the little grey cells in overdrive. The picture of a gorilla contemplating an iPhone led to lots of comments on who might have access to his …

Our report yesterday on the inexorable spread of the false widow spider - an unwelcome immigrant to Blighty's shores which targets guinea pigs and horror-hungry newspaper editors - prompted one Reg reader to protest that the killer arachnid really does pose a threat to those unfortunate enough to cross its path. Nicola Baker, …

A British mum has warned against the inexorable spread of the false widow spider after the killer arachnid apparently dispatched a trio of her family's guinea pigs to the hereafter. Michelle Richards, of Hedge End, Hampshire, recounted to the Daily Mail how son Jordan found three of five guinea pigs dead in their hutch, "with …

PicBoffins have uncovered the earliest known complete central nervous system in a never-before-described water-spider-like creature that prowled the ocean 520 MILLION years ago. A fossil of the megacheiran Leanchoilia illecebrosa, showing its characteristic forceps-like great appendages The massively clawed beast is an example …

America's first spacefaring jumping spider has died, three days after being delivered for display in her new home at the Smithsonian Museum’s Insect Zoo. The arachnid, a red-backed jumping spider (Phidippus johnsoni) nicknamed Neffi after the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, spent over 100 days in orbit on the International Space …

Spider experts working in Brazil have discovered nine new species of pink, purple and orange mini tarantulas after carefully probing into the classification of the hairy horrors. The haul of new spider species comes from a study in the Amazon rainforest by tarantula specialist Dr Rogerio Bertani of the Instituto Butantan in …

A supermarket in the German town of Bexbach was evacuated last Friday after an employee spotted a potentially-deadly Brazilian spider legging it from a crate of bananas. The eight-legged beast, described as "large, greyish" and "about 13 centimeters long", jumped from the crate and made good its escape under a shelf. A quick …

In delightful news for arachnophobes, scientists have revealed the largest known fossil spider - a 165 million-year-old golden orb weaver whose legs spanned an impressive 15cm. The fossilised Nephila jurassica. Pic: Paul Selden et al The female Nephila jurassica (pictured - scale bar represents 5mm) was unearthed in Inner …

An IT engineer who attempted to dispatch a spider with an improvised flamethrower ended up on the wrong end of his own can of deodorant, the Sun reports. Dad-of-two Chris Welding, of Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, explained: "It was about 10.30pm last night. My wife was getting ready for bed and suddenly she let out a scream. She said …

A Canadian tourist who decided to take a quick nap on a NZ beach following a skinny-dip ended up seriously hospitalised after a venomous spider bit his penis, Oz's The Age reports. The unnamed 22-year-old awoke after his kip in the North Island's northern extremity to find his penis "swollen and painful with a red mark on the …

A newly-discovered spider has been dubbed Heteropoda davidbowie, in the hope that slapping the rock star's moniker on the beast will help raise awareness about the plight of endangered arachnid species worldwide. Peter Jäger, the man who identified the spider from Mars Malaysia, told the Observer that "naming spiders after …

Danish boffins have uncovered an unforeseen, extra downside of the melting of the Arctic ice cap, according to reports. Not only will there be sea level rises and massive flooding*; there will also be a plague of enormous, invulnerable, heavily armoured meat-eating cannibal spiders. The worrying yet exciting news comes …