By Shreya Dasgupta The Sydney funnel-web spider, a highly venomous arachnid found crawling in and around Australia’s most populous city, was long thought to be a single species. But it’s actually three different species,

“The Newcastle funnel-web, Atrax christenseni— dubbed Big Boy—is a totally new species. The ‘true’ Sydney Funnel-web, Atrax robustus centres on the North Shore of Sydney and the Central Coast, and the Southern Sydney Funnel-web, Atrax montanus, is a resurrected species name from 1914,” Loria explained.

Researchers say they used anatomical and DNA comparisons to study different populations of the Sydney funnel-web spider – one of the world’s deadliest spiders – and found there were three species, only two of which were previously known to science.

Scientists in Australia have discovered a ‘giant’ species of Sydney funnel-web spider, one of the world’s deadliest. Nicknamed ‘Big Boy’, the species was originally found by Kane Christensen, a spider enthusiast and ex-head of spiders at the Australian Reptile Park. in the early 2000s near Newcastle, 170 km north of Sydney.

There are several genera of funnel web spiders, but the most common ones in Australia are Atrax, Hadronyche, and Illawarra. They vary in size and color, usually black or brown, with shiny carapaces. The males are generally smaller and less robust than the females.

An international team of scientists has revised the classification of Australia's most famous spider. With a bite more deadly to humans than that of any other spider, the iconic Sydney funnel-web has long been considered a single species,

Scientists in Australia have discovered a larger, more venomous species of one of the world's deadliest spiders, the Sydney funnel-web spider.

A new bigger and more dangerous version of the world's deadliest spider, the funnel web, has been identified in the land down under – and it even has longer fangs and more venom