Video Shows Woman Discovering Largest Venomous Spider in the World Creeping Under Her Toilet Seat
“I want to cry. It is huge.”
Coming across a giant, poisonous spider would be unpleasant at the best of times. Finding one lurking underneath a toilet seat? Unspeakable. But that's exactly what happened to Gabriella Pizzato, an Australian model who lives on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Pizzato had already spent 20 minutes in the bathroom before she realized there was something else in there with her: a gigantic huntsman spider. If your imagination can't quite picture it, prepare yourself—Pizzato took a video of the critter, and it's quite literally the stuff of nightmares. Here's what happened.
Pizzato had just finished using the bathroom when she realized there was a huge huntsman spider lurking underneath the toilet seat—one that had been there for at least 20 minutes. Pizzato had her phone handy, and took video of the gruesome arachnid. "I just went to the toilet, and I got up and flushed the toilet and there is a big … spider under the seat," she says in the TikTok post. Keep reading to learn more and see the video.
Pizzato looks and sounds understandably horrified as she narrates the video. "I was sitting there for about 20 minutes! Oh my god, I want to show you, it's actually huge. I want to cry. It is huge," she says. The next part of the footage is something straight out of a horror movie—the spider's legs can be seen ominously curling out from underneath the toilet seat. "Oh my god I just saw his legs. It's like under the rim," she says.
Pizzato captioned the video "welcome to Australia… Watch till the end 🙃 I have no idea how I'm ever gonna go to the toilet again." The comments on her video ranged from people horrified because they were watching it while in the bathroom, to others saying they would never feel safe in a restroom again.
The huntsman spider is considered the world's largest poisonous spider by leg span and is native to Australia. They are also found in Laos, South America, and Africa. Fun fact: They can grow to the size of a dinner plate. Also known as "crab" spiders, the huntsman is true to its name: instead of spinning webs, it hunts down its prey.
According to Christy Bills, an entomologist and the invertebrate collections manager at the Natural History Museum of Utah, huntsman spiders can travel up to a yard a second. "They can often be quite large and very quick," she says. Huntsmen will chase down their prey before killing it with venom and using their strong mouthparts (chelicerae) to help finish the victim off.
Huntsman spiders are actually useful for getting rid of cockroaches, other spiders, and household pests such as mosquitos. They are not deadly to humans and will often try to run away from them, but their bite can be very painful. As with many other species, humans are more likely to get bitten by a mother guarding her eggs.
Huntsman spiders are very social: They enjoy long, "romantic" courtships and live in large communities where they raise all the baby spiders together, and feed them as a group. "The social species are doing something different than all the other solitary species," says Linda Rayor, a senior research associate in the Department of Entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).
@gabpizzato Watch till the end 🙃 I have no idea how I'm ever gonna goto the toilet again #spider #australia #fyp ♬ original sound – Gabriella Pizzato
