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[ASCIt]

Brown recluse is my favorite, mostly because it's one of the only two actually deadly spiders around here (the other being the over-hyped black widow).

[SRD]

..Redback, Funnelweb, Mouse spider.. Why are people scared of Australia? It's not like they're just gonna walk into the house.. even though redbacks are housespiders..

Aaaanyywaaayy... Would anyone mind adding [trainable] [child] and stuff to all the giant versions for me?

[KodKod]

Why are people scared of Australia?

Because Clock Spider.

Clock Spider!

[Sus]

Why are people scared of Australia?

Because Clock Spider.

Clock Spider!

Also paralysis ticks and irukandji.

Seriously, everything down there seems to be specially designed to kill people.

[SRD]

Pfft irukandji is more around NZ than aus.

You only get paralysis ticks if you're a grubby, dirty, dwarf who sleeps OUTSIDE in the mud like an elf.

Snakes run AWAY from you, plus they can't get inside.

Spiders are actually cool and cuddly.

Who's retarded enough to swim with jellyfish anyway? Seriously.

The only major problem are the bogans.

[KodKod]

You neglected to mention carnivorous drop-bears.

[Sadrice]

They also have the best eyesight of any invertebrate

I rather doubt that (did you get that from wikipedia? If so, the exact quote is "some of the best"). 
In any case, it all depends on how you define best.  They have excellent visual acuity over a fairly long range, very good detection of movement, pretty decent color vision, and their vision extends into the ultraviolet.  Stomatopods, on the other hand, also have excellent visual acuity (it's not at all easy to compare visual acuity between different animals), 12 separate kinds of color sensing cells with 4 of them dedicated to ultraviolet, implying that they see 12 distinct colors, where we only have threeish (though it's entirely possible it doesn't work like that, you'd have to ask one to be sure).  They can also sense plane polarized light, and distinguish between the planes of rotation extremely well.  At least 2 species can detect and differentiate circular polarized light as well, much better than the finest human made sensors.  They have three (non color) regions of detail vision in each eye, as well as the full color midband, giving them trinocular depth perception with just a single eye, which they take advantage of by mounting their eyes on independently movable stalks.  Also, the "smasher" type can punch incredibly hard, hard enough to smash snail shells and aquarium glass.  The "spearer" type will just stab the crap out of you.


In short, stomatopods are perhaps the second coolest arthropods (after ants).  Jumping spiders are also awesome, though.


EDIT:  found an article on some bbc website saying Zebra Spiders (a very cute kind of Salticid) have the "best vision of any arthropod",  but I'm unwilling to believe that without a citation, or at least an explanation of how they are measuring that.

[NW_Kohaku]

You know, it may be ironic from a person who often refers to things like spiders and snakes as cute, but aquatic creatures like lobsters and shrimp really freak me the fuck out. 

My response to any sort of giant shrimp that can punch holes is aquariums is "Kill it with Magma".

Anyway, I'm fairly sure that visual acuity is probably more in line with what they were talking about.  We don't think of pit vipers having better vision than a hawk just because it can see in infrared (for very limited resolutions and distances).

[muzzz]

Why are people scared of Australia?

If it's not because of the animals...

[Sadrice]

I was poking around on google scholar, reading about measurements of the vision of stomatopods and salticid spiders, and found some data.  This paper has some cool stuff about vision and pathfinding in salticid spiders (they are pretty good at looking at a prey item and then taking a complex indirect route that breaks visual contact to get into a position to strike, mentally computing where they are in relation to the target).  It cites a visual acuity of 2.3 arcminute in the Anterior Medial Eyes (the big central ones, which have a double lens system making them a telephoto lens) of the salticid spider Phiale.  It also has some very cute diagrams of spiders, and is well worth a look.  This paper has some good information about stomatopod eyes, but is a lot harder to read.  I think it says that Oratosquilla scyllarus has a visual acuity of 8.4 arcminutes in the Acute Zone of the midband, but I'm not at all sure that they're talking about the same thing as the other paper, since they call it smallest usable ΔΦ_v.  Just for reference, normal human visual acuity is around 5 arcminutes.  If I'm interpereting these papers correctly, jumping spiders have a fair bit better visual acuity than mantis shrimp.  I also found some cool data about accuracy of depth perception in both salticids and stomatopods, but I haven't yet figured out how to interpret the numbers given.


Interestingly, both stomatopods and salticid spiders have some unusual visual habits, where when they're examining an object to identify it, they scan their eyes back and forth across it, and also rotate their eyes.  Normal creatures only do scanning type movements when they are following a moving object, and use saccadic (jerky) movements for that sort of examination.  In the spider paper there's an adorable diagram at the bottom of page 8, showing a jumping spider leaning back and forth to scan back and forth get a good look at something (their eyes are moveable, but not to nearly the degree of stomatopod eyestalks, and they use body movements to do most of their looking).

[Niyazov]

Good find sadrice!

"One of the most endearing aspects of these spiders is a result of the subtle ρ turns that they make as they align to observed objects. Just what they are looking at, and what objects they can recognize, are of greatest interest."

[SRD]

Re-railinggg.... My spider died after like a year so, unless I get them to breed like cats they might be useless.

[ASCIt]

Actually, I think the camel spider is pretty messed up. As in, they're cool and all, but if I saw one irl I'd mess myself. Although, since they're technically not spiders, spiders are still awesome.

[Sadrice]

i love those things, but theyre a bit intimidating.  i find them occasionally here in northern california.  the local species is smallish, but mindlessly aggressive.  i put one in a jar and poked at it with a pencil once, it attacked the pencil, and latched on hard enough for me to lift it from the jar with the pencil.  another time i disturbed one in some dry leaves, and it immediately started wrestling with a leaf that had moved.  yet another time, i found one in my laundry hamper, which did not make me at all happy.

[Cobaldunderpants]

Actually, I think the camel spider is pretty messed up. As in, they're cool and all, but if I saw one irl I'd mess myself. Although, since they're technically not spiders, spiders are still awesome.

Yeah, camel spiders are more closely related to ants. Solitary, four-jawed, psycho ants.