Someone asked if I saw large spiders in Palo Verde the other day. Yes. I did.

The were a fair number of them emerging from burrows during one week, presumably because it was breeding time.  I found 3 individuals in the lab one morning, one of which had decided to rest on the light switch.

There were two distinct species (unless they were actually different sexes); pictured here was the larger one.  Paul decided to pit them together one night and the larger of the two killed and deflated the smaller.