Discovery of 25,000 diving tarantulas could prove lucrative for a tiny Australian outback community
It’s not so much a field of dreams as a field of nightmares: A 10 kilometre floodplain infested with 25,000 tarantulas.
However, living next to spiders may not always be a bad thing, especially if the spiders in question are rare and under-researched. A tiny settlement in the sparsely-populated Northern Territory of Australia has been the subject of scientific attention, after it was discovered that a nearby flood plain is home to an infestation of 25,000 tarantulas from a newly-discovered species.
However, rather than this unsettling news making sure that no one will ever visit the town again, leading Australian arachnologist, Dr. Robert Raven, believes that this could be good news for the remote community of Maningrida, which is about 500 kilometres – or five hours’ drive – from Darwin, the nearest city.
Dr. Raven believes that the venom of these spiders, which is strong enough to induce vomiting in humans, could be used for medical research purposes.
The diving tarantula is so named because it is able to survive underwater by creating air bubbles. It was only discovered in 2006 and the full potential of it as a medical resource has not yet been realised.
The uniquely high concentration of spiders in Maningrida – about 25,000 of these eight-legged creatures – means it would make the business of finding the spiders and extracting their venom much easier. A normal colony size is only around two to three hundred spiders.
The sheer size of the Maningrida group could be very attractive to biologists and medical researches trying to find out more about the tarantulas. Dr. Raven hopes that this can work in the favour of the small community, which is mostly made up of Aboriginal people, as the intellectual property surrounding the spider belongs to the community.
Dr. Raven said,
“This is a resource for the community in a number of ways… and this could flow back into the community eventually to help them manage the parks better.”
(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence)
