Hosts on edge as Australia's biggest male funnel web spider visits studio

Australia's largest known male funnel web spider has been knocked off his pedestal by a new eight-legged giant.

The Today team met Hercules last year, a 7.9 centimetre long funnel web which got milked for venom live on television.

Now, if that segment wasn't daunting enough for the team, this morning Alex and Jane were introduced to the new big man in town - Hemsworth.

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Measuring at an incredible 9.3 centimetres from tip to tip, Hemsworth was handed in to a local collection centre near Newcastle, NSW.

And because of his mammoth size, what better name than that of Australia's great Hollywood export, the Hemsworth brothers.

"We know a good thing when we see one and as far as the Hemsworth equivalent of a spider is concerned, he's big and he's beautiful," Australian reptile Park handler, Emma Teni told Today.

"At the Australian Reptile Park, we're the sole supplier of venom for the anti-venom program and we rely on public donations of spiders to be handed in at the park or one of our drop off locations.

"We have locations from Newcastle all the way down to Sydney and we encourage people who find these spiders to safely collect them, drop them to the location and then they go in to make life saving antivenom."

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Emma brought in another funnel web spider, so Alex and Jayne could see just how bog Hemsworth is by comparison.

But the sight of not one, but two deadly spiders sitting just centimetres away had the hosts feeling a little uneasy.

"There's two of the most deadly spiders in the world just there and there's no lid on this thing," Alex said.

"He's really trying to climb up that Perspex Emma, are you really confident he won't be able to get out?"

Hear the full chat on spider safety in the video above