‘Biggest of all NZ spiders’ turns up in Gordonton
Golly gee, we were startled to turn up a spectacular critter while stacking firewood recently.
It was a banded tunnelweb, Hexathele hochstetteri, belonging to a family which according to spider experts Ray and Lyn Forster are, at least by weight, the biggest of all NZ spiders. They are primitive, closely related to the Australian funnelwebs and rather more distantly to the American tarantulas.
Unlike some of their overseas cousins, the NZ species are thought to be only slightly venomous, although a bite still can cause localised pain and inflammation.
A rare beastie
There are spiders in this country that have a bigger leg span, but for sheer bulk, these are hard to beat.
The banded tunnelweb is reasonably common and widespread throughout the North Island, but is not often seen.
We treated our guest with the utmost care and courtesy and gently placed him or her behind the wood shed. What a darling!
- Get in touch if you come across one of these hefty specimens.
- For another spider story, click here. We came across a beautiful nurseryweb while washing the dishes one day.
This one is a good size! I’m pleased to hear you released it back to where it came from…I’ve seen one or two, but NOT this big!
Moments after these photos were taken it dropped off the piece of wood and made a beeline for my trouser-leg!
I found one up in northland
Found a decent one today. I’ve spotted a few while cleaning up round home here in Taumarunui the last few months
Good things to keep an eye out for Lesley! We haven’t seen ours for a while now….
Found one of these extra large spiders within a thickly web filled tunnel inside a block of firewood. Not wanted anything of this nature inside the house I shook it out “WoW” the biggest bodied spider I have seen (apart from Tarantulas of course). It lies where it landed inside the woodheap.
Tutukaka Coast, the home of many interesting insects and spiders.
Sounds a heckin’ honker Lesley! Well done. Here’s wishing
this critter a long happy life, not carried inside your house on a piece of firewood!
Hi there I find one of NZ biggest spiders in motueka in the South Island in the garden when planting veggies 29/10/2021
Very impressive. A beauty, from your emailed photo. Thanks for sending!
Just found a small black one of these north of Gore in Southland.
Hi, I saw what I think is one of those on the Tongariro river trail yesterday. I took a couple of photos, very impressive and I hope it has a long and safe life down there.
Hi Anne – wonderful to hear this! A beautiful place for it to live, for sure.
We have found one of these guys and we have her in a clear container at the moment, she hunts like she’s outside and she hides underground,we gave her worms and slater bugs for food but we have never seen one before,we found her up by our compost bin and we searched her up and assuming she is one of these guys because of her bottom area with the multi-colouring as above in your picture….Her size is about 5-7cm without her legs added they are about 3-4cm long if stretched maybe longer. Iv’e read on other sites that there arn’t many around in N.Z. We live in Taupo, do you know of a place that keeps unusual spiders or houses them… Mum dosn’t want her back in the garden just incase we run into her again.. Is there a certain place elsewhere to put them? Any info would be good
Thanks Crystal & Paula
“Not often seen” Seriously?
I’ve never seen a small one of these yet?! I live in Manukau, next to bush… I’m for ever squashing these little buggers!
(nah, just kidding… I knew that comment would upset most… lol)
But on a serious note: there are heaps of these in and around my tin sheds.
Had one today! Got video of it attacking the stick I was trying to pick it up with…
They really like solid rotting woody areas, they weave a silky smooth blanket for webbing, I’ve even seen some around my section, weaving webs around holes into the ground in the grass, just like a Funnel Web… looks pretty cool.
I just pick them up and place them on the bush floor in Totara Park.
Hi Garry, pleased for you that you have plenty of these around where you live, and that you enjoy them! I still think it’s fair to say most people don’t see them very often even though, as I also said, they’re reasonably common.
Managed to somehow have one of these beauties trapped in my uniform shirt this morning, thought it was a cockroach from the feel of the size and when i took the shirt off and flapped it around a bit my lovely hitchhiker dropped out. Spent ages trying to figure out what it was, thanks for the great picture as it looks exactly like my new friend =D
Hope it hasn’t set up camp in your wardrobe, and glad you are still able to consider it a friend!
Hi there. I have a extremely large one photoed in my wood stack
What weight are they? We just found one in the wood pile. had a bit of a suprise finding it and it ran away.
Hi Imogen, it’s hard to find precise information on how heavy these animals are, the bit about them being by weight the biggest of all NZ spiders comes from Ray and Lyn Forster’s book, Spiders of New Zealand and Their Worldwide Kin (1999, Otago University Press). The best I can find is that the closely related and similarly sized black tunnelweb (Porrhothele antipodiana) has reported weights up to 2.8 grams – after having a good feed of garden snails! (http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Bio25Tuat02-t1-body-d8.html). Peter Jackson has reportedly said Shelob, in his movie The Return of the King, was inspired by this spider. Don’t know whether banded tunnelwebs eat garden snails, be nice if they did!
Weighs next to nothing, we’re talking grams… Prob between 10-50 range.
hi cool pics
i found one of these spiders while splitting manuka firewood.
it was big as i put it in a jar and showed my wife and kids they all freaked at the size of it.
we then let it go.
i have been searching for it on the net to identify what kind of spider it was.
this is it
Found one of these in a load of firewood that we had delivered one winter… I assume it was the cold that kept it sitting still… whew…. I saw the creases in the head, and how big the damn thing was… all I thought was it’s an Aussie spider… like a funnel web or something…. mainly because I had never seen anything like it before in my entire life, or one that big… I freaked a little, and proceeded to throw a large bit of wood at it… I felt better, but I had to find out what the hell it was! Did not know we had spiders like that in this country!
Impressive little lovlies, aren’t they?
Mate I have seen red head tunnelwebs down here with the leg span of my palm. 15-16cm. Bulky as too.
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11307026
I’m not sure how this happens. Because these spiders shouldn’t be able to grow this big. They moult a fix amount of time. It’s very strange that they are this large.
Hi Jacod, I think you’re right – spiders, at least in the genus Stanwellia, shouldn’t be able to grow this big. But that Herald story should probably be taken with a grain of salt – it’s easy to make a spider appear big by holding it close to the camera, and there’s nothing to provide scale on this one. And it’s not in the website’s interest to question the story, which was the most-clicked on the Wairarapa Times-Age website for the year. Tunnelwebs (Hexathele and Porrhothele) are generally bigger than Stanwellia.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/wairarapa-times-age/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503414&objectid=11376929
My mum came out This morning with a giant spider on her dressing gown when I told her she could’nt get the dressing gown off fast enough, dad caught it in a jar and it was just like the photo up the top
I found one of the exact same spiders yesterday while splitting wood, it just jumped out unharmed and crawled into some tree roots with a couple stops on the way but I managed to snap some awesome picks of it and I posted them up on my instagram @blake.photography64 the one I found was about 6cm wide about the same size as the one you caught maybe even bigger
Glad to hear it was fine, and you as well! Haven’t seen one for some time here in Gordonton…
Hi there spider experts,
Me and my lovely wife are going to go spider hunting.
Any tips and tricks you can give us?
Wouldn’t call ourselves experts 🙂 Your best option is probably to go out at night with a good torch or headlamp into an area of reasonably intact native bush. Pick a warm, humid night, preferably after rain. A good way to pick out spiders is to scan the vegetation through binoculars while holding your torch/headlamp so that you’re viewing directly along the light beam. Spiders’ eyes reflect strongly and show up as bright points of light, like miniature cats’ eyes.
What a fine specimen. Thrilled to observe your respect for this beautiful NZ arachnid. I found a much smaller one in my garage on the North Shore in Auckland and also backed off so as not to disturb the animal. Thanks for the post, greatly enjoyed by my kids and I. Educate and preserve.
Great to hear you and your kids enjoyed finding one of these beauties, Groovejets! Educate and preserve indeed.
Finally able to put a name to this species. I have seen plenty in the garden here in south taranaki. Up until now, we called them weta spiders.
I kind of like weta spiders, Karl! Great spotting.
The title of this is very misleading. They are not NZs biggest spider by weight. Porrhothele grow at least a CM larger in the body and are even bulkier in build. I own several of both species. We also have at least 40 species of trapdoor in NZ that can easily knock a banded tunnelweb out weight wise. In a final note there are 20 discribed species within the hexathele family in NZ and even a expert cannot tell just by looking a photos that is this actually a hochstetteri.
Thanks for your comments Kelly, good to have input from someone who has personal experience of these animals. While it’s not possible to get all the details into a headline, the article makes it clear that the “biggest of all NZ spiders” refers to the Hexathelidae generally (which includes Porrhothele), rather than this species in particular. That’s attributed to the Forsters, who know a lot more about spiders than I do, so I took their word for it! Interesting that you say some of the trapdoor spiders can be even bigger, I haven’t seen this anywhere else. Regarding whether this is actually a hochstetteri, it seems from what I’ve read that many of the Hexathele species have restricted ranges, many of them confined to the South Island, and the photos I’ve seen of other Hexathele species all look a lot darker. The Forsters (again) say “In the North Island, the commonest species of Hexathele is large, with a yellowish-brown carapace and a prominent chevron pattern on the upper abdominal surface … A number of dark coloured, and sometimes black, species are also found in the North Island. … The pale but distinctively patterned abdomen is characteristic of Hexathele hochstetteri.” If you know of any other Hexathele species in the Waikato that have a similar chevron pattern on the abdomen I’d be interested to know what they are, and any pointers on how to distinguish them.
Do we have a native pamphobetus Antonius in far north
Hi Stephen – Pamphobeteus antinous is a South American tarantula and doesn’t occur in NZ. The native spider that looks most like it is probably the black tunnelweb, Porrhothele antipodiana. Just looking at the iNaturalistNZ site it has been recorded as far north as Kerikeri, so that may be what you’ve seen.
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Hi! My brother and I were cleaning the shed the other day and we found one of those spiders in the rubbish. We were quite surprised about her size and then looked in the internet to see what species she was and found this site. So…….thank you for posting this information. I carefully took her and put her on a big pile of garden waste like branches, leaves etc. I thought she will find lots of other critters to eat there. 🙂
Great to hear Claus – and very glad you put her in a good new home! Cheers.