Walking the hills last weekend, our Hong Kong correspondent spotted this large spider in a drainage ditch. We do not have a book on Hong Kong spiders but it looks like the huntsman, Heteropoda venatoria which goes by a number of common names including Giant Crab Spider. Huntsman spiders are straight killers, building no web to trap their prey. The venom contains a potassium channel-blocker—bad news for anything with a nervous system. Insects are its main prey but it has, apparently, also been known to kill scorpions and bats.
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