Until Mark Wong recently flipped over a rock in Tallaganda State Forest in New South Wales, Australia, it had been just another day of looking at spiders. Then, the ecologist spotted the burrow of Atrax sutherlandi, a funnel-web spider.

“I began poking at it with a stick, and I was amazed at what came rushing out at me. The first thing that caught my eye was the red fang,” says Wong. (Also see "New 'Blue Face' Peacock Spider Is Fancy Dancer.")

Normally, A. sutherlandi has a glossy black back and fang, as well as a deep-brown or plum underbelly. The spider that sprung from the burrow, however, had a blood-red belly and fang.

Wong knew immediately that he had made an once-in-a-lifetime discovery.

“I had never seen a funnel-web spider with those colors before"—and it turns out no one else had, either, says Wong, a National Geographic Young Explorer and Ph.D. student at the Australian National University in Canberra.

It's very common for individual animals, even spiders, to have different colors, says Amber Beavis, a spider expert and senior researcher at the Regional Australia Institute, an independent think tank in Canberra.

"There’s more variation than you might think,” Beavis says. But the red-fanged spider struck her as a particularly unusual find.

“I spent five years in this area looking for spiders, and I didn’t see anything like it.”

Why So Red?

A careful search of the area also didn’t yield any other spiders with similar coloring, says Wong. He brought the oddly colored spider back to the lab, but it died.

He's not sure what gave this particular spider its scarlet hue, but it's likely some sort of genetic mutation.

The Amazing Peacock Spider March 24, 2015 - Meet Sparklemuffin, Skeletorus, and Elephans, three recently identified peacock spiders. Just a quarter inch long (five millimeters), male peacock spiders are known for their brightly colored backs and mating dances. Jürgen Otto, a researcher who has been working to document the tiny insects, has identified 20 new species in the past four years. Otto has captured some incredible images and videos and posted them online for the world to see.

To read more about these peacock spiders, click here



To see more peacock spiders, check out Otto's work on - Meet Sparklemuffin, Skeletorus, and Elephans, three recently identified peacock spiders. Just a quarter inch long (five millimeters), male peacock spiders are known for their brightly colored backs and mating dances. Jürgen Otto, a researcher who has been working to document the tiny insects, has identified 20 new species in the past four years. Otto has captured some incredible images and videos and posted them online for the world to see.To see more peacock spiders, check out Otto's work on Facebook YouTube , and Flickr.

The color is also probably not for communicating with other funnel-web spiders, he says. Not only do A. sutherlandi mostly live in complete darkness, they're solitary and have notoriously poor eyesight.

Funnel-webs, which reach about two inches (five centimeters) in length, spend most of their lives in underground burrows, with males emerging only to look for mates.

The arachnids line their burrows with silk that vibrates when prey is at the entrance. Then, the spiders spring into action, just like Wong experienced firsthand.

Funnel-webs are also well known in Australia for their venom: Bites from the closely related Sydney funnel-web spiders (A. robustus) used to kill several people every year until scientists developed an effective anti-venom. (See "What Should You Do If You Find a Spider in Your House?")

A. sutherlandi are also venomous, although have killed far fewer people due to their remote habitats.

View Images A normally colored female funnel-web spider (left) next to the oddly red specimen. Photographs by Mark Wong, The Australian National University

Image Problem

Although the red-fanged arachnid isn't new to science, it's still special, Beavis adds.

"When we see these one-off examples that look different from every other members of their species, it gets people to look at spiders a bit differently,” Beavis says. (See "7 Bug and Spider Myths Squashed.")

“Spiders have a bit of an image problem. Lots of folks find them scary," she says.

Even Beavis. When she first started her Ph.D. research, “I was trying to do my work and one of them would move, and I would squeal. It was pretty undignified,” Beavis said.

Now, however, she has learned to love spiders—both as predators of many pest species and, like the red-fanged oddity, as simply beautiful creatures.