Caution arachnophobes, many parts of the world appear to be home to giant spiders, thankfully all in the name of art.

First up, a giant bug on top of a building in Reno, Nevada.

This spider sculpture was created by artist David Fambrough. It consists of the body of a VW beetle / bug (depending where you live) with huge metal legs. Some people wanted to squash the impressive looking bug, but it has been granted a reprieve and will instead be moved to another part of the city.

Controversy can also surround the bronze or steel casts of Louise Bourgeois‘ sculpture Maman, which can currently be found in 8 different location worldwide. In my home town, Ottawa, there’s a 10m tall Maman which cost $3.2millionCAD, though it quickly became a popular local icon.

Maman can also be found outside art galleries in Bilbao, Tokyo and Seoul.

In Kansas City Maman isn’t visible on Google Maps, but Street View reveals that she is happily menacing two women and a (doubtless quite traumatised) baby in a stroller.

Maman also lives in St Petersburg, Paris and Havana, but I can’t track her down on Google Maps or Google Earth. Let me know if you can!

Finally, giant spiders must spin giant webs … like this one in Colorado, which appears to be at least a couple of hundred metres wide.

Thanks to Steve and Bleij.

The latest imagery update has now arrived on Google Maps, and with it comes this rather sad image of a beached Sperm Whale on the island of Hjelmsøya, which is off the coast of the extreme north of Norway.

According to gyrrus, who found the image of the whale:

it probably drifted onshore already dead … and was removed by the Norwegian Coast Guard a week or two after this image was taken.

This isn’t the only example of a dead whale found in Google’s imagery – all the way back in February 2006 we posted this image of a bleeding whale on a beach in South Africa.

We also previously featured a couple of pods of very-much-alive whales, as well as a roundup of some of the best fake whales across the globe.

Thanks to gyrrus.

Long-time GSS readers may recall the story of Bennie the Dinosaur, who we originally spotted way back in February 2006.

Bennie was originally employed as the mascot for a now-defunct chain of cigarette shops and in his lifetime had moved around a bit, even changing sex along the way.

The last we’d heard of Bennie was that he’d been moved to the garden of a former employee of the company, but that garden was not covered on Google Earth.

That garden is now visible, but in that time there’s been some shocking developments, and all that we can see are Bennie’s charred remains:

The official word is that Bennie died during a forest fire, but with the dinosaur’s well-publicised past involvement in cigarette advertising it’s hard to accept that story.

A much more likely explanation is that, as with a staggering 800 people in the US each year, Bennie died as a result of carelessness with his cigarettes.

Thanks to Glenn Rice.

The web is abuzz today with news that an English animal sanctuary has applied to the Guinness Book of World Records to have one of their bullocks, “Chilli”, recognised as Britain’s tallest cow.

The giant Friesian apparently measures a staggering 6ft 6ins (1.98 metres), which raises the question – can we pick Chilli out amongst all the other cows at the Ferne Animal Sanctuary?

The current world record holder for tallest living cow is 6ft 8in Italian “Fiorino”, who was unavailable for comment.

Also see our previous coverage of the World’s Largest (model) Cow.

Thanks to Rob

I wonder what kind of animal left these tracks on these salt flats in South Africa? Are there any animal trackers out there who can identify the creatures responsible?

Part of the National Geographic African Megaflyover Project, this particular image also features some slightly more identifiable tracks, but not left by an animal I suspect…

See our top-rated post of all time – Google Sightseeing Safari – for lots of animals that were still there when the photographs were taken!

Thanks to lepadekor.