On the trail with Cambodia’s tarantula hunters

Nothing to fear: A spider hunter walking calmly with a tarantula on her shoulder in Kampong Thom province. — Reuters

PHNOM PENH: The shiny, hairy creatures might make some people run a mile but in the humid jungle of Kampong Thom province, north of Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh, tarantula hunting is all in a day’s work.

Cambodians have long hunted spiders for food and medicine but it wasn’t until severe food shortages during the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in the mid-1970s that people turned to spiders as a staple.