Now Goblin Spiders are very very small,
they are a little bit hard to find - you have got to get down on your hands and knees
in forest leaf litter around the world to find them
but when we do find them, they're remarkable
little animals. The specimens from this new species came from
Horn Island, in the Torres Strait
in north Queensland. At the moment they are
only known on this single island
but we imagine that probably
surveys in the local area will turn up
with additional specimens. If anybody
wants to send Barbara and I to the Horn Island
We are ready to pop off
We could probably take Sir David with us
I'm sure he doesn't mind scrabbling
around looking for spiders. But these
specimens was first collected in the 1980s
by Queensland Museum staff
And, as usual with a lot of museum
collections, especially invertebrate
animals, they were sitting in
vaults of the museum, waiting to be discovered
and that's when Barbara came along
and started looking at the spiders.
Now, Goblin Spiders are small,
they're very small. This particular
species is extremely small -
it's 1.04mm
in length, and we've got the actual
specimen in the jar, which we can
get out shortly. I hope you've all got your
reading glasses on you,
I know I need them as well.
Now, of course we shouldn't really
anthropomorphise between ourselves
and things like spiders, but
Sir David but there are three defining
features in this species,
so please don't take this the wrong way. One of them
is that it's got smaller eyes
than most other species, presumably
it doesn't see quite as well as most of its
ancestors. And
regrettably it has quite different genitalia
to all the other species in the genus
So, we won't take that
any further we do have children in the audience
And, shortly
I'll ask Sir David to point out the most
defining feature which Barbara found when she
described this species was a lateral process
on the clipeus so I'll ask you to point that out sometime as well
now, life on earth, to use the title of Sir David's
groundbreaking documentary and book is a never ending tapestry of diversity that continually
throws up surprises, even for those of us hardened by years
literally years, of staring down a microscope, and each time we find a new species it's literally a
Eureka moment, helping to put together a staggeringly large jigsaw puzzle, to help document
four billion years of evolution. Now Barbara and I couldn't think of a more fitting person to name this
species for. I avidly read your Zoo Quest books as a kid in the 1960s by borrowing them from
our local library. I'm discovering Agatha Christie novels at the same time.
Luckily I became a biologist and not a detective
trying to solve murders,
and later in my life I was totally enthralled by your documentaries, starting with Life on Earth in 1979.
I think we can safely say that you've inspired an entire generation, or two, or three, by making
natural history accessible, in our living rooms, so from all of us
in love with nature, thank-you.
Giving one's name to a species, of course is
the ultimate compliment from the scientific community from anywhere
Now Harry Butler has got sixty.
[ha ha ha] I'm not in that league
I do have a few. Materpiscis
a bit of a problem really - a go-go fish from Devonian
The first with internal
fertilisation has been discovered from the fossil
which have the young developing umbilical cord
of course this implies the copulation
so this is the first copulator
known in the so this is the first copulator
known in the
history of the world, and it's got my name.
I do ponder on this, as to the degree of
compliment involved. I remember
going to Go-go absolutely vividly. Go-go, as
you know, was first identified by a scientist from London
from the British Museum, and they went there and
scooped up all these nodules with all these Devonian fish in them, and took them away to London.
When I thought we ought to film this particular site, and I
came down here I discovered that this wasn't altogether a population popular sort of move
as far as people that lived on [ bang ] part of the world is concerned.
And so I said, could we have permission to go to Go-Go.
And I'm not sure who it was it may have been someone from this museum
but I think it was from State, and they said
Why? I want to film the site. He said, "There's nothing there."
And I said, "even so, I would like to film there." And he was very reluctant
he said "You blokes, came from London,
you scooped up all the obvious stuff, you know, the big flashy stuff
and left us to clear up the mess after you blokes had left
And we have now removed everything so there is no point seeing.
But if you wanna go, you can go, but I'm coming with you
So we got in for a helicopter,
and we landed in Go-Go, and I got out and I put my foot on a...
on a block of stone,
and on the stone there was a rectangular shape,
with venation on it - unlike anything I had ever seen before in my life.
I picked it up and
set it to a scientific guide, and I said "What on earth is that?"
and he said "You bastard"
Which I deduced a Pom had once again had returned to Go-Go
and produced one of the fossils that the Australians had missed.
And indeed it was one of these Dermal scutes
from one of those very big armoured fish
which sits in my living room to this day, which my daughter would testify, which is one of the great things
So, Western Australia means a lot to me, actually.
The first time I came, well it was on the same trip actually,
it was a long time ago now - we drove from here
up north to Hamlin Pool, in Shark Bay,
and at that time, those stromatolites were really not very well recognised in the world,
as being what they are, which is the very
very, origin of life
and those stromatolites now, I think every text book has them
as being an example of where our life began, in these oceans.
And that drive
up the west coast
was a dawning of new perception for me.
The splendour of the West Australian flora simply blew my mind.
Day after day we drove through these
wonderful flower fields of wildflowers.
The identity which I of course had no idea
It's an extraordinary place which I really truly treasure in my heart
my time which I spent here – rivalled only by Queensland.
And I go on record, no just for this occasion,
people ask me again and again - "Where was your
favourite place, from a natural histories point of view, in the world?"
And I nearly always say, well I always say, "Cape York."
The splendour of Cape York blows the mind,
and the time I spent in that rainforest
and the time now going onto the reef
So, those are the two sides of Australia,
and they have a great place in my heart.
That I have the population of an inhabitant of one of them
named after me is a matter of great delight.
I've said to my daughter and my son, when I stop travelling I think what I'm going to do
is start really trying to look at spiders and make sense of them.
They seem to be the most
rivetingly interesting of invertebrates.
I once made a film entirely about spiders
and other silk-spinners,
and there is one a Bolas spider
which I picked up in North America,
and one of the camera... - I'm not there when the camera...
...the couple of dozen cameramen work on some of these programs
so I go from one to the other and we will go ahead and do some work
and I explained to the cameraman that the Bolas spider
saw this approaching moth,
had this long filament of silk with a bob
on the end and it whirred with a (!!!) and caught these visiting moths
that's what we wanted to see
So I turned up after he'd been working for a week
and he took me down and he had about a dozen milk bottles,
in each of which there was a sprig of leaves
in each one of them had a spider
All the same species - all Bolas spiders
and he took me round them, he said
"This one, hates light - if you give it flick of light he won't do anything at all.
This one, for some reason or other, is very sensitive to noise
so you can't film that, you can do fine then someone will makes a noise it will stop.
This one, doesn't seem to do anything at all useless,
But this one is an absolute darling.
He/She will go on working a bolas -
doesn't matter what you're doing, what you're saying or what your filming.
Now what did that teach me? That taught me
that these tiny little spiders, less that the size of my fingernail,
had individual personalities.
Isn't that astounding?
I'm not sure about this.
It is careful in its judgements,
merciless, certainly beautiful, but I will treasure it
I thank you very much indeed for this.
It is, as I said at the start -
naming a species is the biggest of compliments you could ask from any scientific community,
and I truly thank you very very much indeed
for this one.
