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PAULDING COUNTY, Ga. -- A Paulding County woman is recovering from major surgery after being bitten by a brown recluse spider at her home. “I would have never known in a million years that a spider could ever do this much damage,” said Victoria Franklin. Franklin was at WellStar Windy Hill Hospital Friday morning, recovering from an April mastectomy. “I didn’t flip out over that. I was glad to be alive,” she said of her surgery. She found out she lost her left breast when the hospital staff told her after she woke up from an 11-day coma. “She said,...

Below is the complete email conversation that Adelaide man David Thorne claims he had with a utility company chasing payment of an overdue bill. From: Jane Gilles Date: Wednesday 8 Oct 2008 12.19pm To: David Thorne Subject: Overdue account Dear David, Our records indicate that your account is overdue by the amount of $233.95. If you have already made this payment please contact us within the next 7 days to confirm payment has been applied to your account and is no longer outstanding. Yours sincerely, Jane Gilles From: David Thorne Date: Wednesday 8 Oct 2008 12.37pm To: Jane Gilles Subject:...

Female sexual cannibals do not find their male partners particularly tasty. Relative to their normal prey, male spiders are not very nutritious, and females only eat their mates if they are starving, researchers have found. That suggests that, among spiders at least, hunger is not the main driving force that compels females to eat their partners after sex. The finding by scientists at Miami University, US is published in the journal Oecologia. Cannibalism is a behaviour that has long intrigued biologists. Males are a less nutritionally balanced food item for females than other prey Spider expert Dr Shawn Wilder Miami...

With a lanky legspan of up to nearly a half foot, a newly discovered spider species is the largest among its family of arachnids in the Middle East. The spider, now dubbed Cerbalus aravensis, was discovered in the dunes of the Sands of Samar in the southern Arava region in Israel by a team of biologists from the University of Haifa-Oranim. The scientists say C. aravensis is nocturnal and mostly active during the hottest months of the year. It constructs underground dens that are sealed off with a lifting door made of sand particles that are glued together to camouflage...

A creepy case of a man who got tarantula hairs stuck in his eye has doctors advising people to wear eye protection when handling the eight-legged pets. In February 2009, a 29-year-old man visited the St. James's University Hospital in Leeds, England, after enduring three weeks of a red, watery and light-sensitive eye. A dose of antibiotics for what was presumed to be conjunctivitis didn't clear the symptoms. Doctors at the hospital examined the eye under high-magnification lenses and spotted hair-like projections sticking into the cornea of the right eye. "When we looked at this guy's cornea, the clear window...

SOUTHEAST Queenslanders should be on the lookout for large black funnel-web spiders as big as an adult hand. As the hot, humid weather arrives, the potentially deadly spiders are on the move, with the first reports of the season this week. Queensland Museum senior curator Robert Raven said yesterday sightings of male funnel-webs had been confirmed at Mt Tamborine in the Gold Coast hinterland and Mt Glorious, west of Brisbane. With summer temperatures and rain, male funnel-webs would be active until at least March or April. Males often wandered at night searching for females, especially during rain. They are black,...

Meet the newest odd couple of the animal kingdom: the giant female and tiny male of the largest web-spinning spider known to science: Nephila komaci. The female of the species has a leg span of up to 5 inches (12 centimeters), while the male—which spends much of its time clambering on its partner's back—barely reaches an inch (2.5 centimeters), a new study says.Part of a well-known group of golden orb-weaver spiders—which can spin webs up to three feet (one meter) wide—N. komaci was first identified in a South African museum collection in 2000. But it wasn't until a 2007 field...

Females of the Australian redback spider, one of the world's most poisonous spiders and a close relative to the black widow, demand 100 minutes of courting or else they usually cannibalize their male suitors, research finds. Proving that bigger isn't always better in the mating game, the tiniest of males sometimes approach female redbacks after offering the critical 100 minutes of wooing and successfully mate without being eaten, according to the paper in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The study shows that puny males of this species can win at love without exerting much effort and begins...

Spider Bugs the Pope in Prague [See URL Video] A spider appeared on Pope Benedict's robes as he addressed politicians and diplomats in Prague on Saturday, disappearing and appearing again.

A German scientist specializing in the discovery of rare species of arachnid has named his latest find after David Bowie, he who introduced the world to "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars" in 1972. Unlike the album for which it was named, though, the Heteropoda davidbowie is no alien -- it was discovered in Malaysia by Peter Jäger, who has found about 200 new spider species over the past 10 years. And H. davidbowie, despite its name, bears no resemblance to either the Thin White Duke or his long-discarded Ziggy Stardust persona. It's large, yellow and hairy -- but...