A RARE type of wold spider, once thought to be extinct in the UK, has been spotted at a UK military base.
The two-inch-long great fox-spider, part of the wolf spider family, is said to be thriving in Surrey in England.
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According to Surrey Wildlife Trust, the spider species was rediscovered at an undeveloped section of a British military base after two years of searching.
Before this, it hadn’t been seen in Britain for the past 27 years.
Mike Waite from Surrey Wildlife Trust found the spider himself.
He told The Guardian: “As soon as my torch fell on it I knew what it was. I was elated.
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“With coronavirus there have been lots of ups and downs this year, and I also turned 60, so it was a good celebration of that.
“It’s a gorgeous spider, if you’re into that kind of thing.”
Great fox-spiders, just like other wolf spiders, are known for hunting down their prey instead of using webs to catch them.
They are nocturnal so this hunting happens at night.
Waite used this knowledge to find the spider and looked in bare sandy spots on the ground around the military base.
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He found a few male spiders, one females and potentially some young spiderlings.
The adult spiders look furry and are reddish or greyish brown in colour with black stripes on their body.
They create silk lined burrows that they hibernate in.
Great fox-spiders are critically endangered but are found in other parts of Europe like Denmark and Holland.
The UK site where the spider was found is being kept a secret for security reasons.
There’s no need to panic though.
The spiders may have fanged jaws but they use those to hunt ants, beetles and other small spiders.
They pose no risk to humans.
Are there dangerous spiders in the UK?
The answer is fairly reassuring…
There are more than 35,000 species of spiders worldwide, but approximately only 650 of these are found in the UK.
Although they are mostly beneficial to our environment, many people do have a fear of spiders, known as arachnophobia.
Thankfully, the majority of spiders that are native to the UK are not harmful to humans.
But there are still regular cases of venomous spiders leaving people with nasty nips.
The false widow spider is the most common of these creepy crawlies to pose a bite threat to Brits.
Other common spiders capable of biting people are the cellar spider and the woodlouse spider.
Their bites are painful and have been known to cause swelling for a few hours, according to Science Focus.
In 2014, a 60-year-old woman died after being bitten by a false widow spider.
However, the cause of death was due to a bacterial infection from the puncture wound, rather than the spider venom itself.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
