Preying mantis with mantis eye disease
Colin Silvey, animal keeper at melb museum

A praying mantis with mantis eye disease. Photo: Joe Armao


With fangs bared and front legs raised the female spider being treated at Melbourne Museum yesterday was doing all she could to scare off keeper Colin Silvey.

Armed with a paintbrush dipped in ethanol, Mr Silvey's task was to remove the dozen parasitic mites that had attached themselves to her back, from where they suck the blood of their host.

Paracitic mites on a female Sydney funel web spider
Colin Silvey, animal keeper at melb museum

A funnel web spider with parasites. Photo: Joe Armao

If they had attached themselves to the area between her fangs, Mr Silvey would have to use a piece of card to effectively floss her fangs.

While being beset with mites is not a life-threatening condition for funnel webs, staff at the museum's live exhibit laboratory are quick to remove them as part of caring for the 14 funnel webs in the collection.

''They attach to a little groove near the abdomen where it's hard for the spider to remove them,'' Mr Silvey said. This is where the ethanol-soaked paintbrush comes in to remove and kill the parasites.

It's one of the more common procedures carried out in the museum's basement laboratory, where bug healthcare can range from surgery on a stick insect to triage on tarantulas.

Head of live exhibits Patrick Honan said for some species such as the critically endangered Lord Howe Island stick insect, the work conducted at the Museum and Melbourne Zoo was aiding conservation efforts for a species that numbers no more than 40 in the wild.

For others, such as the praying mantis, it means learning about mysterious conditions such as mantis eye disease, which causes blindness and is currently untreatable.

''With invertebrates, they can live for quite a few years, so it's worth treating them,'' he said. ''We look at it as like treating a guinea pig or even some species of cat or dog.''

Funnel webs live for seven to 10 years, while a tarantula can live for 30 years.

One of the more serious funnel web injuries is a cracked exoskeleton - so named because spiders' skeletons are on the outside. However, treatment is straightforward. The wound is literally superglued back together. If superglue is unavailable, nail varnish will do.

''It works really well,'' Mr Honan said. ''Spiders don't have a closed circulatory system, so the blood moves around the body. That means that if the body is punctured, it just oozes out. So it's important to be pretty quick about repairing it.''