A brand new species of spider has been discovered in Western Australia, surprising scientists, who previously believed this particular type could only be found in the tropical north.
This blind daddy long-legs spider was located in boreholes in WA's Pilbara region.
It's the first cave-adapted daddy long-legs spider to be reported on the continent, normally only found in Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.
"The new species suggests that these spiders were widely distributed in Australia before the continent's aridification in the last tens of millions of years," Bernhard Huber, one of the authors of a study published in the journal Subterranean Biology, said.
The discovery comes as another subspecies of daddy long-legs was recently discovered on Reunion Island, off the African coast.
It was discovered lurking in the Grotte de La Tortue, a 300,000-year-old lava tube on the island.
Its closest known relatives are found in eastern Africa, which begs the question of how the species actually found the island.
Threadlike worms living in the guts of certain insects make their hosts jump into water and drown.
What scientists knew about these parasites resembling strands of spaghetti was already pretty bizarre.
The larvae infest arthropods, such as crickets and beetles, and grow for several months inside their terrestrial hosts, but they must return to water to mate and lay eggs. To do that, the worms manipulate a host's behavior, compelling it to seek water and plunge in. The parasites can then wriggle out of the host's rear end and swim away.
But the worms just got a lot weirder.
Genetic analysis has revealed that horsehair worms — scientifically classified as the phylum Nematomorpha — took an evolutionary detour many millions of years ago that cost them about 30 per cent of genes that are found in all other animals.
Scientists discovered the loss when they sequenced the genomes of two nematomorph species: the freshwater hairworm Acutogordius australiensis and the marine species Nectonema munidae.
While the worms' behavior has been well-studied, little is known about their genetics. The researchers who sequenced the genomes of A. australiensis and N. munidae hoped to change that, said Tauana Cunha, lead author of the study published in the journal Current Biology.
However, when the scientists compared their horsehair worm genomes with genomic information from other animals, something was missing, Cunha told CNN.
"There's a given set of genes that are expected to be found across animal groups," she said.
"It's used as a metric for the quality of your genome."
The same group of genes — about 200 in all — was absent from both horsehair worm species, suggesting that this was a genomic quirk in the group rather than a data error.
(Staged photos show a deceased squat lobster in the Munida genus with a marine horsehair worm.)
As useful as cilia are, horsehair worms seem to be doing just fine without them, the scientists reported. Prior studies of nematomorphs have noted that they lack cilia, but this had not been explored at the genetic level. The new study presents a fresh perspective on the anomaly, "combining genome-scale molecular data and detailed morphological observation," said biologist Keiichi Kakui, a lecturer in the department of biological sciences at Hokkaido University in Japan.
A redback spider has been seen feasting on a young eastern brown ensnared in its web.
Tameeka Stevens from Greater Bendigo Snake Control was called out to a home in the suburb of Huntly, where she found the grim-looking scene.
"Redback spiders tend to create webs quite close to the ground," she said.
"And sometimes it's underneath things whereby a snake will pass through and get caught up in this.
"Redback spiders create a type of web where they put what's called 'drop lines' down. So anything that does pass through, whether it's an insect, or a lizard or a small snake, will pass through and get tangled in it and the redback spider will come down and start feasting on whatever it's caught."
While the sight might look gruesome, Stevens said it's not particularly rare.
"It's not uncommon," she said.
"I probably get one of these instances per season.
"In this case, the redback spider had a web underneath a shoe rack up the front door and a baby snake had passed through and became trapped in the drop line.
"In some cases, I'm able to attend when the snake has just been caught. But in this case, by the time I got there, the spider and already bitten the snake and started to tangle up the snake in its web."
Stevens said it was hard to tell how long the brown snake had been trapped, as it doesn't take long for redbacks to start attacking their captive prey.
"By the time that they're caught up in the web to the time that the spider notices that there's a food source there, it can only take a few minutes for the spider to come down and start biting the snake and injecting venom into it," she said
"Then it's usually a five, 10, 20-minute process for the spider to start tangling up with the snake and its web and then shortly after it will start feasting."
The redback and brown snake are a dangerous combination - "you've got two of the most venomous animals in Australia engaging with one another," Stevens said.
And while they can prove hazardous to humans, she said it's important to consider the benefits they have brought to modern medicine.
"We have modern-day medications and heart medications that derive from both redback spiders and venomous snakes," Stevens said.
"Although we don't necessarily want them hanging around, they definitely have a medical benefit through life-saving medication...
"They are responsible for killing people. They're also responsible for saving thousands of lives each year as well."
Click through to see a host of other toxic creepy crawlies.
Londoners are being warned to steer clear of the local trees, due to an infestation of toxic caterpillars.
Hounslow Council issued a notice to residents, saying they were working to remove the caterpillars of the oak processionary moth in the area.
The caterpillars, recognisable by their long white hairs, can cause eye and throat irritations in humans, as well as itchy rashes and breathing difficulties.
This image of a spider in a purported real estate listing image was uploaded to Reddit and quickly went viral for its "Australian-ness".
"When Harcourts listings are fulfilling the world's stereotype of living in Australia," poster Andrew_Higginbottom wrote.
Others joked that the spider was a "feature".
"Comes pre-installed with a state of the art fly removal system at no extra charge. Property will not last long!" wrote one.
A giant huntsman emerged on the cockpit ceiling of a Cessna and dropped on top of a panicked pilot, just as the single propeller plane was landing at a tiny airfield in the Northern Territory.
NSW tourist Sean Hancock said the huntsman surprising everyone inside the cockpit capped a perfect day in the NT.
Queensland man Brendo Kerridge snapped this mammoth stick insect in his back yard in Nambour.
The broom shows the size of the creature.
"He was in the lilypillys after landing on roof," Mr Kerridge said.
Mr Kerridge said he "picked him up with broom to have a closer look," before safely letting the creature go.
Museum Victoria said it was a female Acrophylla titan, or Titan Stick Insect.
A new Australian species of peacock spider was named after beloved children's movie Finding Nemo.
Museum's Victoria's Joseph Schubert released new research establishing the existence of Maratus nemo.
"It has a really vibrant orange face with white stripes on it, which kind of looks like a clownfish, so I thought Nemo would be a really suitable name for it," Mr Schubert said.
Mr Schubert, 23, is a proper arachnid aficionado, having scientifically described 12 new species of Maratus spiders - the peacocks - and five species in the Jotus genus of jumping spiders.
He had some help finding Nemo, with an ecological field officer for Nature Glenelg Trust stumbling across the colourful spider near Mount Gambier in South Australia.
NSW woman Christine Jones got a bit of a shock when she went to get into her car one day.
There was a hairy creature waiting for her. She posted the photo to the Australian spider identification page on Facebook.
While it might look scary, the arachnid was a Banded Huntsman, which is harmless.
A Missouri Department of Conservation employee photographed a large orb weaver spiderweb while out on a trail near Springfield, USA.
Francis Skalicky shot the photo on a trail near Springfield, according to the department, which posted the image on its Facebook page. The intricate, circular web was constructed between two trees, and the photo's perspective makes it look massive.
There was no sign of the spider...
Tiny tracking devices were fitted on an Asian Giant Hornet in an attempt to find its nest.
Bosses at the Washington State Department of Agriculture successfully discovered the nest - the first ever found in the nation, in the cavity of a tree on a property near the town of Blaine.
The creatures were 'sucked' out of the nest by experts, because they're so harmful.
A small group of the hornets, which are the world's biggest, can kill a hive of honey bees "in a matter of hours," according to the WSDA.