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Photo#455740
Cockroach spider?

Cockroach spider?
Nogales, Arizona, USA
September 13, 2010
Size: 3 inches
I think it's half cockroach and half spider. It looks like it has a mask on it's back. It was in my bathroom. It's was at night. I think it entered through my widow or drain.

Moved
Moved from Acanthophrynus coronatus.

In light of the comments below, and this forum post, it seems that this specimen might warrant a second look.

Where in Nogales did you find it?
If you don't mind me asking

Moved

That may be something very very neat.
Any chance you saved the specimen or have better photos? I'm guessing three inches includes all the legs since the largest whipspider specimen of the largest species on planet earth is less than two inches in body length. However, your specimen is the only one here that might actually be that species. The red palps, solid leg coloration, and cephalothorax suggest Acanthophrynus but I can't make out the front of the prosoma nor the palp spines so there's no way to say.

 
Palp color
Palp color is commonly meaningless because immatures of various species have red palps. However, immature P. mexicanus don't have red palps when they're a third grown and they're the only species ever recorded from your area except coronatus.

 
Acanthophrynus coronatus
From the tergites on the abdomen, the relative length of the walking leg femora, palp shape and what appears to be a single long spine on the dorsal and ventral side of the exposed basitarsus, this really should be A. coronatus.

 
Show me a serrated crown-like
Show me a serrated crown-like 'corona' row of spines on the front of the carapace then we can talk. Until then, given that Armas 2006 shows them only on pacific coast of Mexico, and nothing else indicates they range anywhere near Arizona, so i'm completely doubtful it's this taxon.

 
Acanthophrynus coronatus in Arizona?
Does Acanthophrynus coronatus really live in Arizona? I thought it was only a species found in Mexico, and I didn't think it was found anywhere near the border.

 
No. The current known norther
No. The current known northern end of distribution is around border of Sinaloa and Sonora, where the coastline is about 800km. Even if species extends further north than known, it seems likely to do so in more mountanous regions and still that's a vast distance. See Schramm, Valdez-Mondragón, & Prendini, 2021. Volcanism and palaeoclimate change drive diversification of the world's largest whip spider (Amblypygi)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/mec.15924

Moved
Moved from ID Request.

Gordon & metrioptera are right...
It's a Tailless Whipscorpion in the Order Amblypygi. You can read more about them here.

They are harmless, in case you were wondering. :)

Welcome to BugGuide!

 
Thanks
I thought I had discovered a new species.

Yup tailess whip for sure. Fa
Yup tailess whip for sure. Fairly common but not often seen in that part of town. Great consumers of insects though.

I'd say tailless whip spider

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