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Friday, July 18, 2008

Camel Spiders, My new favorite Solpugid!

As a standard, every blog from our countries current wars must contain at least one post about the infamous CAMEL SPIDERS! (que sinister music)

No doubt about it. These things are worthy of every post they get! As far as land dwelling arthropods go... Holy Shit! There are quite a few myths about them. They are the size of dinner plates, they are venomous, they attack running camels and tear out their stomachs... etc. To dispel some of the myths, They aren't the size of dinner plates... maybe smallish cafeteria salad plates. (Much better right!) Are they venomous? My intertube research indicates they are not... but just like Mack trucks, they don't need to be to get the job done. I really don't want to get bitten any more than I want a chunk of flesh torn out with small pliers. Last of all, do they attack running camels tearing out their stomachs? I will need more data to answer that... my guess it depends on the camel and it depends on the camel spider. This was my encounter:

So there we were... walking back toward our particular stack of shipping containers. Suddenly! "Whoa!" My friend stops in her tracks. "What is that?" I look down. It was a camel spider about the size of the palm of your hand. It was one of those things that instantly you know not to fuck with. I crouched down to get a better look. My friend circled around it. The camel spider, (who we will call Ralph-Konn from now on,) watched her walk around, then it turned toward her and charged. It literally looked at her, sized her up, decided he could win, and charged! At a normal walking pace Ralph-Konn could easily overtake a person... maybe at a jog too. He was very fast. After a short circling chase, my friend and Ralph-Konn had a stare down. For a moment they both just stood there looking at each other. I was sure that out of this confrontation only one would emerge alive, though I didn't know which for sure. Just incase the Army (she is army) needed some air power intervention I had my 9 mm ready. After a few moments of looking at each other, Ralph-Konn ran to the side of a bunker, lifted the flap door, and went inside.

It was probably the most aggressive animal I have ever seen... including angry stray dogs and UP mosquitos. You could almost see it thinking it's situation over... Amazing! There will be an expedition tonight to try and find more and bigger ones! I'll post pictures if I get any good one!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Its good to see that the air force also found the same and only use for the 9mm as the army... camel spider repellant. we used to catch them and do gladiator matches between other spiders and especially scorpions which you should also be able to find... although i dont know if they can survive the winters there. But they supplied us with endless hours of entertainment and bets. For best entertainment go for the battle royal of a multitude of species to include rodents and baby snakes. I'll let you figure out who usually wins.

Notorious said...

I have heard of Gladiator type matches between camel spiders and scorpions, but I have not witnessed one in person. Just before I took those pictures, there were some Belgians who said that they saw a fight between a CS and scorpion and the CS won. There was a scorpion in the hanger the size of a hand... I think it would be a tough fight. The mouths on the CS are pretty impressive...