Iraq Spiders

I have been receiving a lot of e-mails about Iraq spiders, namely camel spiders. Are they for real?

As you can see, the photo above is not of a camel spider, but of two camels. They put baby camels on the mama camels for easier long distance transport here. It is a strange sight to see a camel riding another camel here in the Middle East!

Tell us about the nasty or strange bug or animal you met. Did a camel spider chase you? Did a scorpion sting you? Did you get sandflies? What type of animal kingdom adventure did you have in the Middle East? We'd love to hear about it.

Click below to see contributions from other visitors to this page...

Camel Spiders 
Just wanted to drop a line real quick about the Camel Spiders from a co-worker. I've never actually seen one, but he has seen a few, and what everyone ...

Bug Bite 
In Iraq, you can get a bug bite without even knowing about it. But don't expect a simple bite with a little itching in Iraq...

I was working at Al Asad ...

I have not had my own adventure, thankfully, with the camel spider coming at me, but I saw a dead one in a glass jar shortly after I arrived in Iraq and the dude was huge--dead, but still huge and that was close enough for me. This is no ordinary spider like in San Antonio.

When I was in Baqubah, we had to keep our radios on at night, listening for info on incoming. About 2am, one fine morning, a female soldier came on the radio, totally freaking out and calling for help.

She kept screaming and shouting that a spider was chasing her around the office. She claimed it was running after her and she could not get away from it.

We were thinking, "she is a soldier in the United States Army and she can't smash a tiny spider?"

So our vector guy went over to help her. The female soldier stayed on the radio, carrying on until he got there. The vector guy took care of the problem and then brought back the prize in a jar. We were quite shocked and amazed. Until that moment, we had never even heard of camel spiders or other Iraq spiders.

See a video about a camel spider

These creatures, also known as wind scorpions, are not really spiders or scorpions. They are a type of anthropod called solipugids. They are not poisonous, they do not jump, and they do not have the ability to make silk like spiders do.

See another video featuring a camel spider.

If camel spiders in Iraq are provoked or if they feel threatened, they will attack and give an extremely painful bite. They crush their prey, which is mostly insects, into tiny pieces and suck out all of the liquid. Yuk!

These nasty Iraq spiders can be as large as 6 inches. That is some spider. They can move as much as 10 miles per hour. They are often found near the dead bodies of camels, awaiting unsuspecting insects, hence the name.

View yet another video about the camel spider.

These fast movers are also found in Mexico and in the southwestern United States. I was born and raised in Texas and never even heard the name until I got to Iraq.

As you can see in the video mentioned above, Iraq spiders move so quickly that they can grab a scorpion and kill it before the scorpion has a chance to sting the camel spider.

I have seen plenty of scorpions in Texas and had the pleasure of being stung by a few. This in itself is a horrible experience, so the camel spider is doing us a favor in my opinion.

Iraq spiders, like camel spiders, hunt at night when it is cooler. They do not like intense light and the hot sun so if you see one and your shadow is the only shade around, the thing is trying to get in your shadow to escape the light. That is why it appeared to be chasing the soldier in the true story above. It was really chasing her shadow!

Let's talk about a tiny annoying bug--the sand fly. Sand flies can give you Baghdad boil.

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