Piotr Naskrecki is a entomologist and photographer at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology but, after his recent encounter with a giant spider, he’ll probably look into another field, or maybe another planet. Yes, Naskrecki says he was taking a walk in Guyana when he heard something scuttling underfoot. He turned his light on it, expecting to see a small mammal but instead, “couldn’t quite understand what I was seeing,” That’s because human eyes were never meant to rest upon the South American Goliath birdeater—a spider that measures one foot across, with a body the size of your fist and two-inch fangs. Yes. This is not a nightmare. This is real life, and there is no waking up from it.
Naskrecki says that the spider’s bite doesn’t have enough venom to kill you, but why would anyone even want to go on living after something like that? …
