Tarantula creeping across road causes camper to crash in Death Valley, officials say
Tourists slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a tarantula creeping across a Death Valley National Park road and ended up causing a crash, officials said.
The Swiss tourists were driving a rented camper van on California 190, the longest straight highway through the park, east of Towne Pass on Oct. 28, the National Park Service said in a news release.
When they hit the brakes, a 24-year-old Canadian man riding a motorcycle crashed into the back of their van, officials said in the release. A National Park Service ambulance took him to Desert View Hospital in Pahrump, Nevada.
“The spider walked away unscathed,” officials said.
Park superintendent Mike Reynolds was the first employee to arrive at the scene and warned drivers to be careful — especially as some roads are still damaged from historic flooding in August.
“Please drive slowly, especially going down steep hills in the park,” Reynolds said in the release. “Our roads still have gravel patches due to flood damage, and wildlife of all sizes are out.”
Tarantulas are elusive and not commonly spotted since they “spend most of their long lives in underground burrows,” officials said. When people do see them, it’s most often in the fall when males between 8 and 10 years old leave those burrows in search of a mate.
“The female sometimes kills and eats him after mating,” officials said. “Even if she doesn’t kill him, the male tarantula rarely lives more than a few more months. However, female tarantulas can live for 25 years, mating multiple times.”
Scary as the spiders may seem, they move slowly and are not aggressive, officials said. What’s more, their bite is most similar to a bee sting and is not deadly to humans.
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