A man found a bizarre bug in his home that looked like an "alien" - he thought it was a "termite", but the truth was much more terrifying.
The man took to Reddit's r/whatsthisbug forum to share snaps of the creature. He wrote: "This bug is randomly walking through my house, it's big and terrifying. What is this bug? Is it a termite?"
He revealed in the comments section he lives in Irvine, a city in California, US. "It looks like an alien! I can’t even tell if it is an ant, spider or scorpion," he added.
An insect expert was on hand to correctly identify the critter, and it was bad news for the original poster. They commented: "Solifugae, aka sun spider. They have a nasty bite and will eat scorpions when given the chance. We have them all over out here in the Mojave desert."
Solifugae - also known as camel spiders, wind scorpions or sun spiders - are a class of arachnid that, despite their nicknames, are neither true scorpions or true spiders. Larger species in the class can grow to be a terrifying six inches long.
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One of their most distinctive features is their jaws, which form a crab-like pincer and can constitute one third of the total body length of some species. They mostly feed on termites and small beetles, but these jaws allow them to take on much larger prey including scorpions, lizards, snakes, birds and rodents.
According to Pinnacle Pest Control, their bites can be "very painful". The site states: "While the bite isn’t directly life-threatening as a camel spider is non-venomous, it can leave a deep wound. The most significant risk associated with a bite is infection. It's advisable to seek medical attention if a lesion's appearance worsens over time."
Soldiers stationed in Egypt in WW1 and Libya in WW2 would reportedly stage fights with camel spiders, pairing them off against either another of their own species or a large scorpion, and take bets on which critter would come out victorious.
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