Wikipedia
Atrax is a genus of venomous spiders found in Australia. It is a member of the subfamily Atracinae, the Australian funnel-web spiders, part of the Hexathelidae family. The genus was erected by the Reverend Octavius Pickard-Cambridge in 1877 for the species Atrax robustus.
, the World Spider Catalog accepted the following species:
- Atrax robustus O.P.-Cambridge, 1877 — Sydney Basin, New South Wales
- Atrax yorkmainorum Gray, 2010 — Canberra region, Southern New South Wales
- Atrax sutherlandi Gray, 2010 — New South Wales far south coast, East Gippsland Victoria
In Greek mythology, Atrax was the son of the river god Peneus and Bura. He was believed to have been the founder and eponym of Atrax or Atracia, a city in Thessaly. He had three daughters: Hippodamia (wife of Pirithous); Caenis, who transformed into a male, Caeneus; and Damasippe, who was married to Cassandrus of Thrace and fell in love with her stepson Hebrus (Cassandrus' son by his first wife Crotonice); as he rejected all her advances, she took revenge on him by falsely accusing him of seducing her; Cassandrus believed the accusations and tried to kill Hebrus, who threw himself into the river Rhombus, which was subsequently renamed Hebrus.