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Australian Scientists Discover Bigger Species of Deadly Funnel Web Spiders

A new species of Funnel Web Spider named Atrax christenseni and nicknamed 'Big Boy' is pictured next to the Sydney Funnel Web Spider in a container at the Australian Museum in Sydney, Australia January 14, 2025. REUTERS/Stefica Nicol Bikes
A new species of Funnel Web Spider named Atrax christenseni and nicknamed 'Big Boy' is pictured next to the Sydney Funnel Web Spider in a container at the Australian Museum in Sydney, Australia January 14, 2025. REUTERS/Stefica Nicol Bikes
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Australian Scientists Discover Bigger Species of Deadly Funnel Web Spiders

A new species of Funnel Web Spider named Atrax christenseni and nicknamed 'Big Boy' is pictured next to the Sydney Funnel Web Spider in a container at the Australian Museum in Sydney, Australia January 14, 2025. REUTERS/Stefica Nicol Bikes
A new species of Funnel Web Spider named Atrax christenseni and nicknamed 'Big Boy' is pictured next to the Sydney Funnel Web Spider in a container at the Australian Museum in Sydney, Australia January 14, 2025. REUTERS/Stefica Nicol Bikes

Australian scientists have discovered a bigger, more venomous species of the Sydney funnel-web spider, one of the world's deadliest.
The new funnel-web species has earned the nickname "Big Boy" and was first discovered in the early 2000s near Newcastle, 170 km (105 miles) north of Sydney, by Kane Christensen, a spider enthusiast and former head of spiders at the Australian Reptile Park.
"This particular spider is a lot larger, its venom glands are a lot larger and its fangs are a lot longer," Reuters quoted him as saying.
In research released on Monday, scientists from the Australian Museum, Flinders University and Germany's Leibniz Institute said the "Big Boy" would be classified as a separate species of funnel-web spider.
Scientists have named the 9-centimeter (3.54 inches) long species as Atrax christenseni, after Christensen's contributions to the research. The more common Sydney funnel-webs can grow up to 5 cm.
The nocturnal black arachnids are usually spotted within around 150 km (93 miles) of Sydney, Australia's largest city, and are mostly active between November and April.
Only the male Sydney funnel-web, which carries a much stronger venom, is responsible for human deaths. A total of 13 deaths have been recorded though no human fatalities have occurred since the development of antivenom in the 1980s, according to the Australian Museum.
The same antivenom is effective in treating bites from "Big Boy,” scientists said.
"Sometimes you might find them in a garage or in a bedroom or somewhere in the house where they might have wandered in during the night," Christensen said of the new species.
"I would not recommend touching them that's for sure, they do give copious amounts of venom."

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Farmed Production of Some Fish - and Seaweed - is Soaring

Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
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Farmed Production of Some Fish - and Seaweed - is Soaring

Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File

The amount of farmed seafood we consume -- as opposed to that taken wild from our waters -- is soaring every year, making aquaculture an ever-more important source for many diets, and a response to overfishing.

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, nearly 99 million tons of aquatic animals (fish, molluscs like oysters and mussels and crustaceans like prawns) were farmed around the world in 2023, five times more than three decades ago.

Since 2022, the farming of aquatic animals has been steadily overtaking fishing around the world -- but with large disparities from species to species.

Fast-growing species

The two biggest sellers on the market in 2023, carp and tilapia, mainly came from freshwater farming, while other widely-consumed fish, like herring, came just from deep sea fishing

Thierry Laugier, a researcher at Ifremer, France's national institute for ocean science and technology, told AFP that fish farmers choose species that grow quickly and with simple requirements, to be able to control the life cycle.

Sales of the most widely farmed fish in Europe, Atlantic salmon, came to 1.9 million tons in 2023, 99 percent of which were farmed.

"We know how to control the ageing or how to launch a reproduction cycle, through injecting hormones," Laugier said.

Asia main producer
Asia is by far the biggest producer of farmed fish, accounting for 92 percent of the 136 million tons -- of both animal and plant species -- produced under manmade conditions in 2023.

"For carp, it comes down to tradition, it has been farmed for thousands of years on the Asian continent," the Ifremer researcher said.

At the other end of the spectrum, sardines and herring are just fished in the oceans, mainly for profitability reasons as some fish grow very slowly.

"It takes around two years to get an adult-sized sardine," Laugier said.

He said farming of some fish has not yet been started as, "for a long time, we thought the ocean was an inexhaustible resource".

Seaweed

Little known in the West, seaweed nevertheless accounts for almost a third of world aquaculture production.

Almost exclusively from Asia, seaweed production increased by nearly 200 percent in two decades, to 38 million tons. It is mainly used in industry, in jellies, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, the expert said.

He said seaweed also has the major advantage of absorbing not just CO2 in the oceans, but also nitrogen and certain pollutants.

"And from an ecological point of view it is better to farm macroalgae than salmon," Laugier said.