First, the announcement. This will be the last RAFO edition of Animals Are Awesome, not because I'm stopping but because soon, it will be more appropriate to call it Animals Are ... Getting Organized and Going Elsewhere!

I've been itching for awhile now, practically since I started writing these, to do something bigger. What I want to do is write the sort of animal compendium that I would want to read. All the books and sites I've seen that list all types of animals in a scientific order also contain dry descriptions (sometimes in list form) of anatomy, colour patterns, diet, etc. And everything I've seen that has interesting information about the animals is a random hodgepodge.

So I'm going to give it a try. I've broken up the animal kingdom into 205 basic animal groups (based on the Order classification, except in the case of invertebrates, where I've gone with Class and sometimes Phylum). I want to make an entry for each one, describing it in a general way and covering what makes it special and interesting. Within each of those 205 groups I want to add individual entries for interesting behaviours, cool individual species, and stories/anecdotes about the animal. Anything interesting that I can find would go in, and I'd do my best to skip the dry, boring stuff that even people who like animals aren't really interested in reading.

In order to organize it the way I want, I won't be able to do it on this site. There's no practical way to organize an archive of a long series of posts in a permanent fashion. And to be honest, there aren't enough interested viewers here to make such a huge project worth my while. You guys are great, and I appreciate everyone who has read it, but there just aren't enough of you here. Instead I'll be starting a blog to organize everything, and will post items as I write them. I'll be going through the animal kingdom in order, from mammals to birds to amphibians to reptiles to fish to invertebrates, covering groups that encompass nearly every creature on Earth.

I hope that anyone who was interested in the series here will join me there and read along as I work my way through it! I'll post a link to the blog once I get it started, which will likely be soon.

I do not, however, want to leave you entirely high and dry. I've also recently been cultivating an interest in cryptids, which are reported but undiscovered animals/monsters, of which there are a great variety beyond the famous Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster. If people were interested, I could do a Crazy Cryptid column (maybe three times a week) for awhile. Is anyone interested?

Now, on with the last Animals Are Awesome column. I bet you want to hear about some big-ass spiders.

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If you want to know what the biggest spider in the world is, first you should know that there are actually two answers to that question, meaning you get double the bang for your spider-fearing buck. It depends on whether you go by leg-span or mass, but don't worry. Both measurements lead to terrifying answers.

The largest spider in the world by leg-span is the Giant Huntsman Spider. Members of the Huntsman Spider family can be found throughout the tropical world, including Australia, Asia, Africa, southern Europe, South America, Central America, and about halfway up the United States (where it was introduced by accident). They are also known as giant crab spiders, wood spiders, rain spiders, and lizard-eating spiders. Most of these spiders grow fairly large, and nearly all of them are venemous, but in general they are not a danger to humans.

In Laos, however, the danger is real. The Huntsman Spiders living here have legspans of at least 10 inches wide, and it is here that you will find the Giant Huntsman Spider -- with a legspan that can be just over 12 inches wide.

That is the stuff of nightmares, my friends. Most of the mass of a Giant Huntsman Spider is in its legs, which are very long and spindley, and twisted in a slightly odd manner so that it looks something like a large crab that can spin webs, poison you, and feast on your soul. The legs are so long you cannot help but imagine them crawling slowly up your body, firm grip bristling with hairs and eight shiny eyes looking deep into yours.

The Giant Huntsman Spider is thought to live in caves because of its pale colour, but it lives near the entrances and so retains full eyesight. Remarkably, this species of spider was not discovered until 2001, as part of a burst of discovery in northern Laos that turned up a thousand new species of plant and animal within a decade.

But if you want to measure the world's largest spider by mass, then you must turn to the horror-filled rain forests of South America. Here lives the Goliath Bird-Eater Spider, which doesn't actually eat birds very often but got its name from an explorer who saw one eating a hummingbird.

The Goliath Bird-Eater can have a leg span just under or up to 12 inches, just barely shorter than the Giant Huntsman, and can weigh six ounces (170 grams).

They are a type of tarantula, and like all tarantulas they are capable of shooting tiny hairs out of their body that irritate anything that threatens the spider. Most tarantulas have what are known as tibial spurs, located on the legs, which keep a female's fangs immobilized during sex, but the Goliath Bird-Eater actually lacks these for some reason. This means that the female is free to do as she pleases, and sometimes she will eat her mate.

In addition to birds, the Goliath Bird-Eater can and will attack other larger animals, including rodents, lizards, bats, and venemous snakes. They are actually fairly harmless to humans, however, even if they do bite in self-defense. That will be a great comfort to you when a heavy, plate-sized tarantula falls on your head and you scream like a little girl, flail your arms about, crack your head on a tree, fall in a river, and get a candiru from the first of these columns stuck in your urethra. The spider by then will have crawled down your shirt.

Animals, everybody. Animals are awesome.

(Below you will find a linked picture of a Goliath Bird-Eater crawling up someone's arm. Here also is a picture of the Giant Huntsman Spider, but sadly I could not find any photos of its entire leg-span. However, if you want to be terrified, plug huntsman spider into Google Images. Go on, I dare you.

http://www.welovepictures.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/The-World%E2%80%99s-Largest-Spider-Pictures-1.jpg )