Today I learned that tarantulas can swim.

I realize that even though they will bite you, they’re relatively harmless to humans. But we’re talking about giant hairy spiders here. In other words, the stuff of my nightmares.

And they just got scarier.

10 Tampa Bay shared a video of a tarantula basically dog paddling its way across the water and it gave me a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. In fact, it almost looks like it’s walking on the water. Granted, the video is two years old, but it recently started making the rounds online again and that’s when I came across it.

Luckily, I’ve never encountered any giant tarantulas around these parts – only the small brown ones that are common around Lake Kemp. They’re admittedly kind of cool, but they’re still spiders, therefore, I won’t be handling one any time soon.

According to Insider, even though they can swim, tarantulas don’t typically get in the water. They usually end up in water if they’re trying to escape a predator or if they accidentally fell in. So, chances are, you’ll never come across one while taking a dip in the lake.

While I can rest a little easier knowing I’ll most likely never witness a tarantula swimming in person, the spider in that video is sure to show up in one of my nightmares here in the future.

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