FORGET Crocodile Dundee... an animal expert is gearing up to capture a colony of poisonous tarantulas with her bare hands!

Fearless Emma Shaw is heading to the jungle where she will trap dozens of giant spiders in order to track them for years to come.

As part of a unique experiment, she will surgically plant electronic radio tags in each spider so that it can be identified in future research.

Emma, who is an arachnologist at Manchester Metropolitan University, has identified an undisturbed nest of around 80 Mexican Red Rump tarantulas from a previous visit to Belize in South America.

She will spend six weeks carrying out the tagging at a British research station at the Las Cuevas site, near the Guatemalan border.

The researcher will use long grass stems to entice the spiders out of their nests and then cover up the entrance with her foot before trapping them with a container or her hands.

The creatures will then be put to sleep with carbon dioxide gas and a grain-sized radio tag will be implanted in their abdomen.

The technique will allow Emma and her colleagues to recognise individual spiders on future visits and check on their movements and growth.

Although the fast-moving species do not contain enough poison to be lethal, they are renowned as being aggressive and their bites can cause severe irritation, dizziness and faintness.

Avoid bites

Despite the risk, Emma said she was 'fairly hopeful' she could avoid bites from the fist-sized creatures.

She said: "I will sedate them using gas and plant the chip before sewing them back up again.

"We have got these spiders and nobody quite knows what is happening with them. They could be moving to different locations or make one burrow and stay in it. We can also work out how much they grow each year and how they add to their numbers.

"This implantation technique has been done in a lab never been performed in the field before. I have never been bitten by a tarantula before.

"It is a possibility that it will happen but this species's primary defence mechanism is using its spiked leg hairs which cause a nettle-like sting and it is more likely to use this than its bite."

Native to South America, the burrowing Red Rumps can grow up to four inches and feed on crickets, small rodents and lizards.

The steely researcher has already had plenty of practise handling the deadly creatures at home - she has her own pet tarantula, nicknamed Charlotte.

The researcher plans a number of follow-up visits to the South American jungle, where she regularly leads field research courses for undergraduate students.

Emma, who is originally from Yorkshire, has a PhD in spider ecology.