Photos

Silk Road travel from Toshkent to Kasgar:
On the road to Saghirdasht pass we met this 8 cm long animal running towards a shadow. It's a Sun "spider" (Class Arachnida; Order Solifuga, also called Solpugida; family of Galeodidae; Galeodes sp.; Walzenspinne). The picture is taken not far from the Obikhingou river near the village of Childara. You can look the site up on Google earth with "Map: view". I was excited to meet my first ever Sun spider!

I'm not sure about the family or species because I have no corresponding literature on the subject and there are many (about 100) species in Central Asia. There is however a helpful a scientific Solifuga site on the net.

The animal is NOT a spider, despite the four pair of legs, the pedipalps and the giant chelicers, it belongs to an order apart, the Solifuga. The little monsters look dangerous and adopt a menacing posture when approached, but they rather attack small insects and have no venom. Reportedly, US soldiers shying away from them in Iraq mistook their approach for an attack, but the Camel spiders (as they are called in some regions) were only looking for a shade.

The picture is not excellent, I know, sorry!