Though there are plenty of scary things in the world, some fears go back just a little further than others do.
For instance, nearly every child in the world is afraid of the dark at some point, and it makes sense why you would be. If you’re in the dark, you can’t see what’s around you and you’re more vulnerable to attacks. There are other fears that can be a little more irrational, things like fear of ghosts or vampires or whatever else.
But perhaps the mother of all strange phobias has to be the fear of spiders.
Though are likely some good evolutionary reasons to be afraid of some spiders, some people seem to take this to an extreme.
If you can’t even stand to look at a tiny spider from across a big room, the chances are that you have a more severe case of arachnophobia than most people. Still, every once in a while there’s a story that shows just how legitimate it can be to be afraid of these creatures in certain situations. In the case of this story, it happened while a couple were on a romantic honeymoon.
But this spider is not like any ordinary spider.
The story took place in Tasmania, an island off the coast of Australia.
The couple we’re talking about is Justine Latton and her husband, who were vacationing in Mount Field National Park. They had rented a lovely cabin and had intended to take in the sights, relax a little bit and recharge themselves.
Although they obviously knew that they were going to see some wildlife on their trip, they definitely didn’t expect to see a spider that was quite this big.
But to make matters even worse, they caught it in the middle of eating an entire possum.
Though it goes without saying, the photographs that the Lattons took are total nightmare fuel.
The spider that they photographed was a huntsman spider, also known as a giant crab spider for their enormous size and appearance. While this whole encounter is definitely horrifying, we should note that the kind of possum the spider was eating was a pygmy possum, and was really only about the size of a large walnut. Regardless, we definitely wouldn’t want to be on the other side of this spider’s fangs.
Fortunately, nobody in the family was injured throughout this encounter… though it did put a bit of a damper on the weekend.
Needless to say, the photographs went viral online and inspired all kinds of similarly shocked and disturbed reactions.
While the story was written up by all kinds of different online outlets, the comments on the 6ABC Action News page were particularly funny.
Some people were marveling at how the spider looked:
Other people were just downright horrified:
And other people used the pictures as an excuse to never visit Australia:
Above all, these photos have just given us more things to be afraid of in an already very scary world… and yet we can’t stop looking at them. In all honestly, huntsman spiders are generally regarded as not that dangerous to humans. Still, we wouldn’t want to learn the hard way.
Special thanks to the Lattons for sharing this awful discovery with the rest of the internet!
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