Posted: 31 Mar 2026

Animal of the month

Meet Titan, our salmon pink birdeater tarantula here at the Living Rainforest. He’s got his name for a reason—this species is one of the largest tarantulas in the world. While males like Titan are smaller than females (which can reach up to 28 cm across), he’s still an impressive size.

One of his most noticeable features is his fangs. In some birdeater tarantulas, these can grow up to an inch long and are used to catch prey or defend themselves. Titan also has another line of defence: the pink hairs on his legs. If he feels threatened, he can flick these hairs into the air, where they can irritate skin.

He may not be the biggest of his kind, but Titan is still a pretty remarkable spider—and always a talking point for visitors.

Plant of the month

The Titan arum is famous for being one of the largest—and certainly one of the smelliest—flowering plants in the world. What many people don’t realise is that it spends most of its life not as a flower at all, but in a leaf stage. At this point, it produces a single leaf that looks a bit like a small tree or an umbrella of leaves which can grow to 7 metres tall.

After storing enough energy from sunlight, this leaf will die back—but the plant isn’t dead. It’s preparing for its next stage: the enormous flower, often called the “corpse flower.” This name comes from the strong smell of rotting flesh it produces, which helps attract pollinators like flesh flies and carrion beetles.

If pollination is successful, the plant then produces clusters of bright berries. These are eaten by rainforest animals, which help spread the seeds. One such animal is the rhinoceros hornbill, which feeds on the fruit and later disperses the seeds through its droppings.

From there, the cycle begins again, high in the steep rainforest hillsides of western Sumatra.