Australian Reptile Park at Gosford announces successful funnel web breeding program

[gary]

Having dropped off live funnel web spiders at Hornsby Hospital here
in Sydney's north a couple of times, it is good to read that the
Australian Reptile Park at Gosford has announced they have
managed to breed funnel webs for the first time.

Originally Posted by Simon McCarthy, Sydney Morning Herald

The park’s spider team have paired funnel webs 80 times over the past week as part of the only funnel web venom extraction program in Australia.

Funnel web antivenom was developed in 1981, before which 13 deaths had been recorded as a result of the dangerous spider’s bite. No fatalities have been recorded since that time.

"This is an exciting time as it’s the first time the Australian Reptile Park has bred funnel web spiders and we are getting some interesting results," Kane Christensen, the park’s head of spiders, said.

"Out of 80 pairings, we have only had three instances of fighting which is in contrast to popular belief that female spiders eat the males after mating."

Mr Christensen said the park is expecting to see around 20 egg sacks as a result of the breeding program in coming months.

Story and video here :-
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/...15-p50rho.html

[Wavytone]

The hot humid conditions must be making them randy !

[DarkArts]

Originally Posted by gary

...the
Australian Reptile Park at Gosford has announced they have
managed to breed funnel webs for the first time.

Hmmm ... I see opportunity. First we export the funnel web spiders, then we export the anti-venom. It's an export industry in the making!

[multiweb (Marc)]

That's terrific news. I was watching a report not so long ago on telly about how many they needed per year and how many they needed to "milk" to get enough venom to maintain their anti-venom stash. They solely relied on donations so that's a massive step up. They must be stoked.