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Deep fried tarantula, anyone? |
It has eight legs, a whole heap of eyes and it has been a constant source of torment for arachnophobia suffers worldwide.
You guessed right… It's spiders.
I'm not talking about innocuous daddy-long legs, these spiders are great big hairy tarantulas and you can buy them for a few cents in the markets of Skuon, Cambodia.
They were first discovered by starving Cambodians in the brutal days of the Khmer Rouge rule and have gone from being a vital food source to a weird and whacky delicacy tourists come far and wide to try.
I haven't sampled these creepy crawlies myself, but I've been told they taste like scrawny, hairy chicken (mmmm yummy) and are fried whole - legs, fangs and all.
Now that you've officially lost your appetite, I'll tell you about another strange spider story that popped up in the news recently.
A British pet shop owner was arrested at Rio de Janeiro Airport for trying to smuggle 1,000 live spiders out of Brazil.
The unnamed man was taken into custody after a startlingly security X-ray revealed that he was trying to smuggle the spiders through customs in his luggage.
He was apprehended for violating laws banning the export of Brazilian animals without authorisation.
The man, who is now unable to leave the country, faces a year in jail and a maximum fine of up to $2.3 million.
The seized spiders were taken by Brazil's environmental watchdog agency Ibama to a museum in Rio's federal university.
It is believed that the man wanted to sell the spiders in his pet shop.
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