Diesel give you a scare in the car
CARS are claimed to be ‘under attack’ from poisonous fuel-sniffing spiders desperate to get into their petrol pipes.
The North American yellow sac spider is particularly known for building its nest inside the fuel vapour lines of cars.
This particular creepy-crawly is venomous and they have been known to bite humans.
Females are known to be more aggressive than males, but either way it is the last thing you want crawling out of your car’s airconditioning vent while you are at the wheel.
Last month, a deadly black widow hitched a 5,000-mile transatlantic ride in a Volkswagen camper van.
It had gone undiscovered for 11 months, while the camper van had been kept in storage.
The problem has become so bad that car-maker Ford says its engineers have been forced to develop a special plastic screen designed to block the unwanted visitors from getting inside the cars.
The spider blocker will be fitted to all of its new Focus RS cars.
“These particular arachnids are not sedentary – they are hunters and constantly roaming,” said David Gimby, a fuel systems engineer at Ford.
“When it’s time to build a birthing cocoon or an over-winter cocoon, they seek a cavity or a depression, like a fuel vapour line opening, which allows them to maximize the use of their silk.”
The spider is native to North America and is currently not known to populate Europe – but car importers now have an extra reason to check under the hood.