> The spider that Scott Carey (Grant Williams) battles in the basement of his house in The Incredible Shrinking Man was played by a trained tarantula named "Tamara" that had earlier played the title role in Universal's Tarantula (1955). In both films, the arachnid was made to move on command and in specified directions through the use of harmless jets of air controlled by workmen just out of range of the camera.

> A tarantula would have gladly consumed a creature as small as Scott Carey was in the film. In real life, some species of tarantula have been known to be as large as a foot in leg-span and to kill animals as large as lizards, mice, birds and small snakes. Here are some other facts about tarantulas:

> Tarantulas produce silk, but since most are ground-dwelling they don't make webs. Instead they use the silk to reinforce their burrows and facilitate climbing in and out of them.

> The tarantula's mouth is a straw-shaped opening, which means that they can only ingest liquid food. The solid parts of the animals they kill have to be ground up and predigested by coating the prey with digestive fluids to break it down to a liquid state.

> Certain species of tarantula have a defense mechanism whereby they can kick hairs off their abdomen or back legs toward their attacker. These fine hairs are barbed and can be lethal to small animals and have been known to cause severe eye damage to humans.

> Tarantulas are venomous, but no tarantula has been known to have a bite that is deadly to people. There have been reports, however, of tarantula bites causing strong hallucinations in humans.

> The life cycle of tarantulas can vary wildly by species, but typically males live to be 11 to 12 years old, while some females have been known to reach between 30 to 40 years of age.