Baloney?! The Camel Spider

       

BIG ENOUGH TO EAT CATS AND DOGS AND KILL COWS AND HORSES ... By Buck Stix

   

   

The photo above comes from a soldier, stationed in Baghdad, who was bitten by a Camel Spider that was hiding in his sleeping bag.  ....  The left photo shows two camel spiders attached together.  The right photo shows the two Camel Spiders along side a tape measure.  ....  Camel Spiders tend to seek out shade during the daytime, so it's not terribly unusual to have a Camel Spider come charging across the desert at you. .... They are BIG and FAST.  ( they can run up to 10 MPH )  Camel Spiders are also cannibalistic. 

A Camel Spider can live for 10-15 years.  Camel Spiders periodically shed their skin, increasing their size every time they do.  Seems that more and more Camel Spiders are living longer, and longer.  This means they are shedding more and more times, growing larger and larger.  If this trend continues, someday a Camel Spider may reach over 3 feet in length. 

Source: http://www.buckstix.com/camelspider.htm

   

   

Before Hans and I moved to the United Arab Emirates colleagues tried to scare me, because they knew I am having a spider phobia, with terrifying stories about hughe Camel spiders. Spiders as big as a plate and so on...
But all these creepy stories ain't true. We have been to the Sharjah Wildlife centre, where they also explained that they don't eat camels and that they are not as big as people say they are. So don't listen to the stupid stories and the photos are manipulated.

   

   

Solifugae - Camel Spider

The order Camel Spider (Solifugae) is a group of arachnids, containing around 900 species. The name derives from Latin, and means those that flee from the sun. Their  common names include camel spider, wind scorpion, and sun spider.

Solifugae are not true spiders. Like scorpions and harvestmen, they belong to a distinct arachnid order.

Most Solifugae live in tropical or semitropical regions where they inhabit warm and arid habitats, but some species have been known to live in grassland or forest habitats. The most distinctive feature of Solifugae is their large chelicerae. Each of the two chelicerae are composed of two articles forming a powerful pincer; each article bears a variable number of teeth. Solifugae also have long pedipalps, which function as sense organs similar to insects' antenna and give the appearance of the two extra legs.

Solifugae are carnivorous or omnivorous, with most species feeding on termites, beetles and other small insects; however, solifugae have been videotaped consuming larger prey such as lizards. Prey is located with the pedipalps and killed and cut into pieces. The prey is then liquefied and the liquid ingested through the pharynx.

Reproduction can involve direct or indirect sperm transfer; when indirect, the male emits a  spermatophore on the ground and then inserts it with his chelicerae in the female's genital pore.

As indicated by their name, Solifugae are mostly nocturnal, and seek shade during the day. It was this behaviour which led coalition soldiers in the 2003 invasion of Iraq to think these arachnids were attacking them. In reality, they were merely moving toward the newly available shade provided by the soldiers' presence. The absence of shade sends them away.

Myths

Solifugae are the subject of many myths and exaggerations about their size, speed, behavior, appetite, and lethality. They are not especially large, the biggest having a legspan of perhaps 12 cm. They are fast on land compared to other invertebrates, the fastest can run perhaps 10 miles per hour (16 km/h), about as fast as a human sprinting. Members of this order of Arachnida apparently have no venom, with the possible exception of one species in India and do not spin webs.

In the Middle East, it was once rumored among American and coalition military forces stationed there that Solifugae will feed on living human flesh. The story goes that the creature will inject some anaesthetizing venom into the exposed skin of its sleeping victim, then feed voraciously, leaving the victim to awaken with a gaping wound. Solifugae, however, do not produce such an anaesthetic, and they do not attack prey larger than themselves unless threatened.
Other stories include tales of them leaping into the air, disemboweling camels, eerie hissing, screaming, and running alongside humvees; all of these tales are false, apparently told to new recruits in order to frighten them, to the amusement of the veterans. Online videos indicate that U.S. Marines sometimes place camel spiders in a ring with scorpions to watch them fight.

Due to their bizarre appearance many people are startled or even afraid of them. However, the greatest threat they pose to humans is their bite in self-defense when one tries to handle them. There is no chance of death directly caused by the bite, but, due to the strong muscles of their chelicerae, they can produce a proportionately large, ragged wound which is prone to infection.

Venom controversy

While the absence of venom in Solifugae is a long-established fact, there is a single published study of one species carried out in India in 1978 by a pair of researchers who did histological preparations of the chelicerae, and found what they believed to be epidermal glands (Aruchami & Sandara Rajulu 1978). Extracts from these glands were then injected into lizards, where it induced paralysis in 7 of 10 tests. While this study has never been confirmed, and while other researchers have been unable to locate similar glands in other species, this particular species does appear to possess venom, although it is not known if there is any mechanism for introducing it into prey (recall that the researchers manually injected it into lizards). Accordingly, for the time being, we must at least acknowledge the possibility that some Solifugae are venomous.

Source: Wikipedia