MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: "GIANT SPIDERS"AND A YORKSHIRE CAVE

Today I take a look at a story that appeared in the British media last week and caught my eye. For those of you who missed it, it`s about a colony of spiders from a cave in the Yorkshire Dales; more specifically, Chapel Fell cave. If you are an arachnophobe look away now.

'Huge UK cave spiders `sent` home. A colony of huge cave spiders are finally heading home after 10 years. The spiders have been squatting in a disused building in the Yorkshire Dales after escaping from a nearby cave, hidden in scientists` equipment. Volunteers and staff from the National Trust`s Malham Tarn estate in North Yorkshire are now transporting the spiders back to their natural home. Measuring seven centimetres across, the cave spiders are amongst the largest spiders found in the UK. “The time has come for the cave spiders to be relocated back to their natural homes,” says Martin Davies,National Trust property manager for the Yorkshire Dales in the UK. The old house is due to be renovated for use by visiting schoolchildren and walkers, Mr Davies explains.' (1)

The Guardian commented on the same day: 'More than 150 of the cave-dwelling species Meta menardi and Meta bourneti are being collected individually and taken in plastic bags to a pothole in the Yorkshire Dales. The journay returns them to their original home, which they left -unnoticed - 10 years ago on the clothes and equipment of a party of university scientists.

'"Exceptionally for cave spiders, which have adapted to live underground, they resettled and flourished in a derelict orchid house which the scientists were using as their base… They clearly took to it [the orchard house] immediately, although we only realised that they were there a couple of years ago,” said Mike Collins of the National Trust, which runs the former mansion of Malham Tarn House, North Yorkshire, as a field centre. The big move follows the trust`s decision to convert the orchid house into a classroom,with facilities such as warmth and light, which the spiders loathe. Familiar from their cave roof cocoons,from which they sally to find prey, they measure up to 8cm (3.1in) across and will nip if repeatedly provoked. [So a bit bigger than the BBC`s measurement.]

'…Visitors will be able to learn about spiders generally, the Meta species and the story of Malham migration, while the descendants of the original travellers get on with life in the dark back at Chapel Fell' (2)

I visited Malham Tarn House in the 1980s on a geography field trip; it`s a lovely place.

1. J.Bourton. Huge UK cave spiders` sent home. BBC Earth News Dec.5th 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newisd_8393000/8393757.stm [accessed Dec.8th 2009]
2. M.Wainwright. Spiders to be sent back to their cave 10 years after their great escape. Guardian December 5th 2009

Devo-Too Much Paranoias

Think I got your dial tone
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Special orders don`t upset us
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Serve it your way
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The things she`s afraid of
I been dipped in double meaning
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