Halle (dpa/sa) - It is large, hairy and has strong legs: the Nosferatu spider is being seen more and more frequently in southern Germany - there are no recent observations of these animals in Saxony-Anhalt. The last time the ruffle hunting spider, named after a silent film classic, was detected in Halle was in 2018, the State Office for Environmental Protection said on request. It is very likely that the animal or an egg clutch was abducted at the time. Garden soil is one of the options for this, it said. There has been no further evidence in the past four years.
The spider with the Latin name Zoropsis spinimana, which can be up to seven centimeters in size and very hairy, was first discovered in Germany in 2005 in Freiburg im Breisgau. It originally comes from the Mediterranean region. As the state office further informed, the spider does not pose a health risk to humans. Even if it is described as poisonous, a bite is roughly comparable to the bite of a mosquito.
