Tarantula
Etymology

The spider originally bearing the name tarantula was Lycosa tarantula, a species of wolf spider native to Mediterranean Europe. The name is derived from the southern Italian town of Taranto. The term tarantula was subsequently applied to almost any large, unfamiliar species of ground-dwelling spider, in particular to the Mygalomorphae and especially the New World Theraphosidae. Compared to tarantulas, wolf spiders are not particularly large or hairy, and so among English speakers in particular, usage eventually shifted in favour of the Theraphosidae, even though they are not closely related to wolf spiders at all, being in a different infraorder.

The name tarantula is also incorrectly applied to other large-bodied spiders, including the purseweb spiders or atypical tarantulas, the funnel-webs (Dipluridae and Hexathelidae), and the dwarf tarantulas. These spiders are related to tarantulas (all being mygalomorphs) but fall into different families from them. Huntsman spiders of the family Sparassidae have also been termed tarantulas because of their large size, when, in fact, they are not related. Instead, huntsman spiders belong to the infraorder Araneomorphae.
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