The UAE’s desert and rocky mountains are tough, inhospitable places to survive, or so you might think. Few knew, for example, that the rocks and wadis of the Northern Emirates are home to tarantula spiders, until a Dutch couple spotted a species during their trek in Hatta.
As The National reported yesterday, only after posting photos of the spider on Facebook did Priscilla van Andel realise that what they had found was a species that had gone unrecorded in this country. She will now collect specimens, but considering the extent of our arachnophobia, perhaps it would have been better if the spider had remained undiscovered.
