Good evening!
This was one of the scariest moments I've had in Madagascar. After the day hike in the Kirindi forest we returned to our accommodation. Bored I decided to go for another walk, completely alone this time, without a guide.
As I was walking, I mostly watched the forest floor, because it has thousands of holes that may contain snakes. For some reason then I stopped and just looked ahead, and my heart sunk when my face was almost touching this huge spider. It's about the size of a fist and had spanned a giant web across the forest path, exactly at the height of my face.
It still gives me the shivers to think that I was less than an inch away from unsuspectingly having this huge spider in the middle of my face. I also got a bit uneasy at the next night walk, as you continuously walk into spider webs because you simply cannot see them.
The red-legged golden orb-web spider (Nephila inaurata) is a species of golden orb-web spider. It lives in Southern Africa and several islands in the Indian Ocean (Madagascar, the Seychelles, Réunion, Mauritius, Rodrigues). Like other spiders in the family Nephilidae it can weave webs so strong that sometimes even birds and bats get caught. Its webs can be found in damp places such as large trees and unpolluted areas to which no cars have access; normally several are strung together to form enormous.. more
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Posted 12 years ago, modified 12 years ago