Let’s continue yesterday’s giant spider horror theme with a look at some recent video games.
First up: Cassiculus, a game where you face giant spiders underground.
Next up: Daz Games plays Jawbone Hollow, where you face… a giant spider underground.
Finally, Daz also tackles giant spiders in Huntsman, where you face a giant spider…in an office building! This one may have the most realistic spider of all of them.
Sweet dreams, arachnophobs…
We’ve previously featured some giant movie spiders. How about a (theoretically) real life giant spider?
Meet the J’ba Fofi.
The J’ba FoFi, also known as the Congolese Giant Spiders, are a type of large arachnid cryptid which is said to inhabit the forests of the Congo, possibly representing a new species of Arachnida.
Most of the many anecdotal tales describe the spiders digging a shallow tunnel under tree roots and camouflaging it with a large screen of leaves. Then they create an almost invisible web between their burrow and a nearby tree, stringing the whole area with a network of trip lines. Some oblivious animal, that’s likely soon to end up on the creature’s menu, will trip the line alerting the spider. The victim will then be chased into the web. This type of predatory behavior is similar to that of several species of trap-door spider.
Natives claim the J’ba FoFi eggs are a pale yellow-white and shaped like peanuts, and the hatchlings are bright yellow with a purple abdomen. Their coloration becomes darker and brown as they mature. Some of the peoples indigenous to the regions in the Congo where the J’ba FoFi has been seen assert that the spider was once quite common, but has since become very rare. Possibly indicating the species has become endangered due to deforestation.
The fullest account by Westerners appears in a cryptozoological book by George Eberhart. On page 204, Eberhart relates the terrifying experience of an English couple traveling through a region of jungle in what is now called the Congo: “R.K. Lloyd and his wife were motoring in the Belgian Congo in 1938 when they saw a large object crossing the trail in front of them. At first, they thought it was a cat or a monkey, but they soon realized it was a spider with legs nearly 3 feet.”
Cryptozoologist William J. Gibbons has hunted for what some think may be a living Congolese dinosaur called Mokele-mbembe. On his third expedition in search of the creature he came upon natives who related their experiences with giant spiders. He shared his experience with readers upon his return to Canada:
“On this third expedition to Equatorial Africa, I took the opportunity to inquire if the pygmies knew of such a giant spider, and indeed they did! They speak of the J’ba FoFi, which is a “giant” or “great spider.” They described a spider that is generally brown in color with a purple mark on the abdomen. They grow to quite an enormous size with a leg span of at least five feet. The giant arachnids weave together a lair made of leaves similar in shape to a traditional pygmy hut, and spin a circular web (said to be very strong) between two trees with a strand stretched across a game trail.”
“These giant ground-dwelling spiders prey on the diminutive forest antelope, birds, and other small game, and are said to be extremely dangerous, not to mention highly venomous,” Gibbons states. “The spiders are said to lay white, peanut-sized eggs in a cluster, and the pygmies give them a wide berth when encountered, but have killed them in the past. The giant spiders were once very common but are now a rare sight.”
Supposedly someone captured footage of a J’ba Fofi in Mozambique in 2014. Look to the right side of this video:
Amazingly vague footage, is it not?
I think a spider of that size unlikely, but more likely than Mokele-mbembe.
But I don’t think I’ll be vacationing in the Congolese jungle any time soon…
Who wouldn’t like a lamp in the shape of a spider wandering around your house at night?
More purchases from Half Price Books and Recycled Books, one of which was actually a mistake.
Just a short, amusing Halloween dog video:
Have a fear of spiders? Maybe you don’t want to hear that it’s tarantula mating season, with thousands of the eight legged creatures on the move in search of a mate:
But don’t worry, this amorous arachnid stampede is only happening in the far-flung locale of [checks notes] the San Francisco Bay area…
(Hat tip: Derek Johnson)
From Australia: The Continent That Wants To Kill You, comes toxic underwater tarantulas.
They don’t live in the ocean, they live in a floodplain where they somehow cover their bodies in air bubbles to breath while underwater.
Well, isn’t this a lovely, cheerful thing to contemplate?
It’s expensive to build an automated factory, and even more pricey to repurpose one. German manufacturing giant Siemens wants that to change, and they’ve developed an army of robot spiders to make it happen.
Utilizing what Siemens calls “mobile manufacturing” researchers in Princeton, New Jersey have build prototype spider-bots that work together to 3D print structures and parts in real time. Known as SiSpis, or Siemens Spiders, these robots work together to accomplish tasks, and can be reprogramed to learn new jobs.
The ability to be reprogramed gives the bots an advantage over traditional manufacturing robots. Opening an industrial manufacturing factory currently means installing expensive robots that can only do one or two tasks well. In theory, the SiSpis’ programing can be altered to address new tasks, allowing for greater flexibility for manufactures.
As a devotee of spider-menace movies, I think I know exactly how this will turn out. Why, the SyFy Channel movie practically writes itself. (As does the inevitable sequel, Spiderbots vs. Lavalanchula…)
Not particularly convincing up close, but it doesn’t have to be…
So a while back I got word of Neil Gaiman being involved in a benefit for a project involving (I kid you not) Tasmanian cave spider sex. He’s evidently quite the Tasmaniophile, having spent his honeymoon with Amanda Palmer in Hobart. It sounded like an odd, interesting project, and the sort of thing to drive Gaiman completists crazy if they didn’t presupport, so I went ahead and ponied up for the deluxe package, which was, IIRC, a bit over $100 for both books.
Now, finally both books from the Sixteen Legs project have come in:
