Boston's first giant hand-sized jumping spider spotted - on Beacon Hill

NBC Boston reports a yellow-striped Joro jumping spider, which could grow to the size of a human hand, has been spotted on Mt. Vernon Street on Beacon Hill, near the Common. The station sent out a fearless reporting team, which managed to get out a dispatch:

The spider was still perched on its web on Wednesday afternoon, and was even being ogled by passersby.

The station quotes a researcher as saying Beacon Hill now represents the most northerly point at which the spiders, originally from East Asia, have been spotted in the US since their arrival in Georgia in 2013.

Scientific American tries to get us all to take a deep breath - literally, should you find yourself face-to-spinneret:

These arachnids, also known as Trichonephila clavata, don’t readily bite, don’t kill humans and - contrary to some social media myths - can’t fly.

More good news:

With their four-inch leg span, flashy black-and-yellow coloration and huge, golden-hued webs, these spiders aren’t subtle. But they’re also shy and docile. A 2023 study by Davis and one of his students, published in the journal Arthropoda, tested how several spider species reacted to a stressor (a light puff of air) and found that while most of them did so by freezing for under a minute, Joro spiders froze for more than an hour.

So, great, all Beacon Hill residents have to do now is take a deep breath when they see a yellow spider the size of their hand and then blow on it.

We await news of the first person to successfully immobilize one of these things by blowing on it.

Meanwhile, looks like the Joros will love it here. Although they first showed up in Georgia, their native climes in eastern Asia are in cooler, more temperate regions, more akin to New England, according to one study.