These creatures do not actually eat camels' stomachs or sleeping soldiers, and they are not so large—but the real camel spider is still an amazing predator. The camel spider's history of misinformation begins with a misidentification. Camel spiders are not even spiders. Like spiders, they are...
What do I mean by real? Jeremy Miller was hunting black widow spiders in a Madagascar forest last winter (of 2005) when he came upon a curious fist-size web made of leaves, branches and debris woven together with thin, tough strands of spider silk. No black widow ever made such a ...
The scariest part about the camel spider is the outlandish myths surrounding it. Some of these myths exaggerate the camel spider’s size, while others claim that they chase humans (and at terrifying speeds), scream, and even feast on camels and humans. Luckily, the majority of these stories ...
As with ‘true’ spiders, the camel spider’s body is divided into 2tagmata(segments): theopisthosoma(the abdomen) and theprosoma(a section that includes the animal's head and thorax). A camel spider’s opisthosoma is itself divided into 10 segments. (Compare this with an insect’s b...
As previously mentioned, camel spiders are fast. But as we know, camel spiders don’t eat people and therefore have no real reason to chase them. So why might a camel spider be seen to chase a human anyway? Camel spiders are nocturnal.Desert nights are cooler, and camel spiders do their...
Status: Real picture; inaccurate description. Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2004] From someone stationed in Baghdad. He was recently bitten by a camel spider which was hiding in his sleeping bag. I thought you'd like to see what a camel spider looks like. It'll give you a better...