There are more than a thousand species of huntsman spider. They occur in most warm temperate to tropical regions of the world, including much of Australasia, Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean Basin, and the Americas. They're called huntsmen because they don't build webs but hunt and forage for food.
Not all of them are particularly large, but the biggest of them all – the giant huntsman spider, which was discovered in a cave in Laos in 2001 – is the world's largest spider by leg span. (The goliath bird–eating spider has a larger body and is more massive.)
Huntsman spiders are also known as giant crab spiders. This is rather confusing, because the world's largest species of crab is the Japanese spider crab (sometimes known as the giant spider crab).
© Haydn Thompson 2017