Giant huntsman spider found at UK primary school leaping out of banana box

15 May 2024 , 16:37

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The giant spider species from Africa was found at a London primary school (Image: Credit: Dani Zenith via Pen News)

A giant huntsman spider travelled in a box of bananas more than 3,000 miles from Ivory Coast to the UK - and spooked staff at a primary school.

The spider - a Heteropoda venatoria - hitched a ride in the cardboard box to jump about three feet in front of office employees at the school. Dani Zenith, a teaching assistant, said: "The office staff and the ladies in their mid-twenties were screaming, and a couple of us older staff members in our forties wondered what was going on. We happily caught said spider while they were screaming and freaking out. We weren't scared – we're kind of enthusiasts anyway."

The huntsman is notorious for its size, and can have a leg span of up to five inches when fully grown. this specimen was a juvenile male, estimated by Dani to be six centimetres across.

The school, in Croydon, south London, regularly receives produce from its council for the children. Staff were unpackaging a box last week when they encountered the arachnid, which came from Ivory Coast according to the container's labelling.

The arachnid hitched a ride to Britain aboard the kids’ bananas (Credit: Dani Zenith via Pen News)

The spider jumped out of the box, much to the shock of office staff (Credit: Dani Zenith via Pen News)

Mrs Zenith, using an alias due to the nature of her job, continued: "We knew straight away that it wasn't your regular found-indoors giant house spider.

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"Myself and another member of staff who is very into spiders – she has her own spider book – wanted to find out what spider it was and is it native to the UK. But every time we put it into a Google search, which I know you can't always rely upon, it just kept coming back as being a huntsman."

The 45-year-old woman turned to a Natural History Museum page on Facebook as she searched for an answers. It soon transpired the search engine had got it right.

Although the venomous species can deliver a painful bite, they’re not considered dangerous to humans and survive on a diet of insects. For the schoolkids, it was a visitor unlike any other.

Mrs Zenith said: “This, for me, was a positive, fascinating, educational find, and the children and myself loved finding out about this stowaway. In no way was it scary or negative or anything to be concerned about. We just opened a box of bananas and out popped this magical creature."

The spider has now been rehomed.

Michael Havis