Piotr Naskrecki is an entomologist and wildlife photographer with Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, and he spends a good deal of time trekking through the wilderness in search of strange species.

Alone in the rainforest of Guyana one night, he stopped still and turned out his light, listening to the sounds of the dark. Small footsteps rustled nearby: “I pressed the switch and pointed the light at the source of the sound, expecting to see a small mammal, a possum, a rat maybe. And at first this is what I thought I saw – a big, hairy animal, the size of a rodent. But something wasn’t right,” Naskrecki said.

The hairy animal was a Goliath birdeater (Theraphosa blondi), the largest spider in the world. As a species, Golaiths are rare, “almost mythical,” said Naskrecki, and they achieve a legspan of roughly 30cm.

A 12-inch spider crawling around the forest floor definitely qualifies as goliath, but the bird eating is likely part of the myth that surrounds the species. While they are certainly capable of killing smaller birds, Goliaths scavenge the forest floor at night, which gives them very little chance of running into any.

In fact, though somewhat less exiting, the spiders survive mainly on earthworms that thrive in the moist, warm habitat. There is however some anecdotal evidence to suggest they might eat bird eggs if they happen upon a nest.

Piotr Naskrecki has produced a series of Goliath photographs that can be found here. His full account of the story can be read on his blog: The Smaller Majority.