Searching For The Giant Chicken-Eating Spider

Martin Nicholas travels to South America's Amazon in search of a spider known as the chicken-eating spider.

Martin Nicholas travels to The South American Amazon in search of a spider known as the chicken-eating spider (possibly a new species). From his sources it is reported that this spider is known to eat chickens. And why wouldn’t it be able to? This giant spider is nearly a foot across.

“I love those kinds of stories, they are irresistible. So I had to go to Peru and see if it was true.”

He used a mini-spider cam to look into the burrows of these tarantulas and he found remarkable behavior such as many little mini-spiders and one big spider that appeared to be a parent. It’s considered remarkable because they often cannibalize their own young. It also seemed that the spiders hat a pet frog that lived in their burrow with them.

“It(the frog) may offer some sort of service to spiders, like sweeping up ants that might bother the spiders.”

Nicholas’s team don’t know yet if this chicken-eating spider is a new species. It has yet to be identified.