27-05-2025
'Why is he so calm?' Aussie driver shows nerves of steel after massive spider hitches a ride
The bravery of an Aussie man who calmly dove his car while a giant spider crawled around him has been praised by social media.
The short 11-second video was shared on TikTok recently and it attracted more than 10million views.
Most people were stunned that the stoney-face man was driving at high speeds on a highway as the big huntsman was inches away from him.
'I crashed the car three times already watching this,' one person joked.
'This would send me into cardiac arrest,' another said.
'Why is he so calm?' a third person wrote.
Some pointed out the man could have been so serene as he smirked while watching the spider move past him because he clearly knew it wasn't a dangerous species.
The spider was a huntsman, which are not known to bite humans.
'It's a huntsman, you're all right, they only eat bugs,' one person wrote.
'It's okay, it's a huntsman spider. Their venom isn't poisonous to humans,' another said.
While huntsman spiders are not considered dangerous to humans, though they do possess venom.
Their bites are typically mild, causing pain and swelling and while it has venom it is not fatal to humans.
But they formidable-looking creatures.
On average, a huntsman spider's leg-span can reach up to 15cm, while their bodies measure about 1.8cm long.
Huntsman spiders are large, long-legged spiders. They are mostly grey to brown, sometimes with banded legs.
They are commonly found living under loose bark on trees, in crevices on rock walls and in logs, under rocks and slabs of bark on the ground, and on foliage.
Many huntsman spiders have rather flattened bodies adapted for living in narrow spaces under loose bark or rock crevices. This is aided by their legs which, instead of bending vertically in relation to the body, have the joints twisted so that they spread out forwards and laterally in crab-like fashion.
Huntsman spiders of many species sometimes enter houses. They are also notorious for entering cars, and being found hiding behind sun visors or running across the dashboard.
