With the war on, we expected to get searches for different kinds of military hardware. We expected searches for the nations of the Middle East. We expected searches for war news and pictures. But we had a hard time figuring out what was the reason for a very odd term that showed up in the middle of last week: camel spiders.

Looks like this was the big war-related April Fool of 2003. No, there really is such an animal as the camel spider, but its powers of ingestion have been highly exaggerated. An email was going around the Internet last week that claimed that the troops in Iraq were encountering camel spiders and discovering all kinds of amazing facts about the creatures.

They run over 25 miles per hour. They make squealing noises like a child screaming when they scamper about. Worst of all, they are called "camel spiders" because they climb onto the bellies of camels and eat their stomachs from the outside, numbing the flesh by secreting a natural anesthetic. The camels don't even notice until their intestines fall out.

None of which is true.

In reality, camel spiders aren't some mysterious Arabian creature -- we have them in the United States and in Mexico, where they are called matevenados. They are slightly smaller than the human hand, and while they do run quickly, their top speed is 10 miles per hour, not 25. But they also make no noise, they excrete no venom, and although they can be voracious nocturnal predators, they don't eat camels. They eat delicious crickets and pillbugs, and sometimes scorpions.

TOMORROW: More war on the new Lycos 50.