“When we first spotted them I was in awe, lost for words,”
lead author Ranil Nanayakkara of the University of Kelaniya tells National
Geographic’s Nadia Drake.
Nanayakkara and his colleagues discovered the unusually
adorned arachnid in a section of Sri Lanka’s southwestern rainforest surrounded
by tea and rubber plantations. The spider, named after donor and
conservationist Joni Triantis Van Sickle, measures around five inches long
(Drake notes that it’s “big enough to comfortably hug a donut”) and is a
speedy, aggressive predator that darts out from its underground burrow when
hapless insects arrive on the scene.
Per National Geographic, C. jonitriantisvansicklei is the
first new Chilobrachys species found in the South Asian country since the end
of the 19th century. Previously, Sri Lanka’s only Chilobrachys representative
was a brown spider called C. nitelus. -- Smithsonian Magazine
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