Giant Florida Cane Spider Attacks House in Photo-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
A photo of what’s described as a real giant Florida cane spider attached to the side of a house has gone viral.
The Truth:
A doctored photo that appears to show a giant Florida cane spider on the side of a house has remerged yet again, but the photo is still a fake.
The photo of the so-called Florida cane spider resurfaced in 2017 after it was pinned to an “arachnids” board on Pinterest in 2017. The original poster of the photo didn’t provide much detail, aside from the fact that it showed a “real Florida cane spider”:
Lucky for us, we’ve seen this doctored photo used several times in the past, and we actually spoke with the person who created it. When the photo first emerged in 2013, it was identified as an Angolan witch spider, and it caused plenty of concern. However, the artist who created the photo told TruthorFiction.com that he overlaid a photo of a real wolf spider on a photo of a house to make the spider appear to be huge. And, four years later, the photo is still causing confusion.
The photo reemerged in 2015, this time as a “gigantic Hawaiian cane spider” with the message, “This morning I heard something climbing around on the outside of my townhouse. I thought maybe it was the maintenance people repairing the Hardiplank siding, but when I got outside I saw this giant spider! The very rare Giant Hawaiian Cane Spider can grow up to six feet across. They are ‘mostly harmless’ but scary as hell.”
This probably won’t be the last time that the doctored photo of a wolf spider is misidentified as a giant cane spider or a Angolan witch spider — but, rest assured, the photo isn’t real.