Giant Bird-eating Spiders

Some funny fellow added this photo on a Facebook page and said it was a typical Australian spider. This elicited several responses, one of which immediately noticed that it was a photoshopped job and that the grains under the human hand were smaller than the ones under the spider. OK that is acceptable. Then there were two other lines with multiple comments each, one saying "No that's actually a South American bird-eating spider"and then again "Yes that is an Australian bird-eating spider and some are bigger than that"

Some selected comments follow (there were over a thousand responses in all):

Jean Maree Brook: We had one in our house just slightly smaller then this one,big sac like that,Elijah,(my daughter),looked down and it was right next to her foot,then the next night it was in the loungeroom.And were in inner sydney,go figure..They seen to be getting bigger

Lana Stanbury: We have large one large one over here "the Avondale" spider comes bigger than a dinner plate had one in our house at St Mary's Bay. Very furry they are and harmless

Bente Buhr Bethnas: Eastern tarantula is the biggest birdeating spider in australia and can grow bigger than a mans hand so i dont think its fake .. ive seen another big spider at he home of one of my daughters friends and it was a blondie ... also called goliath .. it was still a teenanger and was bigger than my hand and he told us it would be around the size of a dinnerplate .. yak ..

Micah E Giantology This is not average size for any spider on earth today. There have been some 1/4 pound record spiders from the Amazon, with 11 inch leg spans, and a 12 to 13 inch span spider this size could very well exist, but this spider in this photo is a prop, or digitally enhanced.

[...So we can very well mark down that the photo is a fake...but at the same time there are witnesses  that are willing to swear that spiders can be a foot across or bigger (like the one in the photo) in both Astralia and in South America. This is confirmation of older rumours we had heard before, and they might not be true, but its possibly valuable to know that the rumours persist.-DD]