New 'astonishing' tarantula has strange horn on its back
Discovered in a little-studied part of Angola, the arachnid ambushes its prey at night.
As soon as John Midgley got back to camp and opened the small jar, he knew he had found something incredible.
In the light of the crackling fire in southeastern Angola, the entomologist examined a strange-looking tarantula he’d just captured. A large, slightly squishy horn sat squarely on the animal’s back.
Midgley is not a spider expert, so he messaged photos of his find to his collaborator, Ian Engelbrecht at the University of Pretoria.
“Ian accused me of Photoshopping the pictures,” quips Midgley, of the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in South Africa. (Read about a new tarantula species found at high altitude.)
So he went out the next night and found several more tarantulas with the same large horn.
“I knew then
