EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

The Unknown Bobangi Huntsman

Unidentified or new species (spider Sp A [new]), Family Sparassidae
Bobangi, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Explanation:  This swift-moving leggy arachnid is a huntsman, of spider family Sparassidae.  It's nearly as big as my hand with fingers spread.  And faster than any arachnid I've ever seen.

I chased this wily arthropod across the front porch of my hut, deep in the heart of the Congo River Basin, in the village of Bobangi along the Ubangi River, just north of the confluence with the Congo River.  I caught just a few quick photos before it vanished under the loose floorboards of the hut where I was sleeping.  

The spider family Sparassidae contains at least 84 genera and hundreds of species.  Sparassids are fantastic creatures, with legs that bend sideways so that even the largest of the specimens can lie flat and hide under tree bark, rocks, and the floorboards of visitors' huts.  

We previously encountered another Sparassid spider in a different part of the Congo River Basin, but I have no idea what this particular species is, or if it has even been catalogued.  If it is new to science, I can only describe it as "Sparassidae Sp A (new)."  

But perhaps it had been included in old entomological surveys of the Congo made in the early to middle 20th century.  Little of that information is available outside the collections in the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels, Belgium, that houses 10 million insect specimens and an unknown number of spider specimens, including a number of as-yet unidentified Sparassid spiders.  And even that Museum is currently closed for extensive renovation until next year.  

Other available images of huntsman spiders of the Congo are unlike the specimen I chased.