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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dave Jay" data-source="post: 131334" data-attributes="member: 27677">Yeah, I think it's just because they are mostly brown/orange, hairy and come from Africa.With the bird-eating label there is a confirmed story from the early 1900s of a farmer having baby chickens go missing and following a trail to find a spider had dragged the chick 100s of meters and was trying to drag it down it's burrow. That explains the name in Australia but I have also read that tarantulas will take newly hatched chicks from bird nests , that might explain the label for Asian species. I wasn't aware of South American species being labelled bird-eaters but it makes sense that arboreal species may well come across a nest of baby birds and take one. Another theory is that small birds can be trapped in orb spider webs and early explorers attributed those webs to the big hairy spiders found nearby.</blockquote>