It must have been an incredible moment in the lives of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield when they were each named the new Spider-Man. I wonder how that compares to having an actual spider named after you though. We’ll have to ask them, now that two new species of spider have been christened in honor of the two most recent Peter Parkers (Peter Parkii?).

Discovered in Iran by Yuri M. Marusik and Alireza Zamani, the two new spiders were dubbed Filistata maguirei and Pritha garfieldi. I’m not a spider expert (though, apparently, I’m the only one in my house able to kill them), so you can read the full paper about their discovery here.

Both spiders are actually members of the same family, Filistatidae (also known as crevice weavers). Filistata maguirei was found in “the surroundings of the Geno Biosphere Reserve,” which is located in Iran’s Hormozgan Province, and Pritha garfieldi was found crawling “in the southern macroslopes of the Alborz Mountains” in Iran’s Tehran Province.

Okay, let’s see what these new spiders look like.

Tobey Maguire was first, so he gets to start, let’s see Filistata maguirei.

KILL IT! KILL IT! THAT’S THE SPIDER FROM ARACHNOPHOBIA!

Sorry. Sorry. Instinct and all. That must be the hardest part of being an arachnologist: fighting your natural urge to step on the actual spiders. I’ll be better with the next one.

Here’s Andrew Garfield’s spider, Pritha garfieldi.

BURN IT! BUUUUURNNNN IT NOOOOWWW!

………

…I’m embarrassed.

Well, at so long as these things stay in Iran I should be fine. Let me just check…

“Filistatidae is a relatively small, globally-distributed family currently comprising 121 extant species within 18 genera–”

Okay then, good luck with your planet of horrible spiders. I’ll be taking a spaceship somewhere else now. For those of you staying, tell us in the comments what other superhero actor you’d like to see lend his or her name to a new species.

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HT: GeekTyrant

Spider Images: Yuri M. Marusik and Alireza Zamani

Feature Image: Columbia Pictures