A few posts ago I was writing about spiders. I just found out some info about the species that occurred in Florida that I was always running into. They were Nephila clavipes; a large brown and orange beast with interesting, featherlike tufts on their legs. These orb weaving spiders are quite familiar to people like myself that go walking in the woods with any regularity. Walking through one of their webs and getting their sticky center web deposited on your head or face is pretty darn unpleasant. You can see some nice pictures of them here.
I also mentioned in that previous post that I have seen lots of large spiders in Australia. It turns out the largest spider web I have ever seen, which I found in Eneabba (western Australia), was from the same genus as the Florida banana spiders. This is an even bigger orb weaver that goes by the name of Nephilus edulis. The web I saw had a strand that stretched over ten feet. The prey catching web was on one end, and was many feet wide, and at the other end of a long horizontal part of the web was a golden egg sac. The spider in the web was a fitting attendant. She too was quite large. You can read a little more about this spider’s striking web and the females size here.