Newcastle, Australia - A massive new subspecies of Australia's famous funnel-web spider, the deadliest in the world, has been discovered and confirmed by scientists.

Scientists have confirmed that more than one subspecies of the world's deadliest spider, the funnel-web, have now been discovered and confirmed.

One of the newly-discovered subspecies has been called the Newcastle Funnel-Web and given the playful nickname of "Big Boy."

The discovery was revealed in a new paper from scientists at the Australian Museum in Sydney, Flinders University, and the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB) in Germany.

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There are now officially three separate subspecies of the funnel-web spider, the "classic" Sydney funnel-web, the Southern Sydney funnel-web, and the Newcastle funnel-web, which is the biggest of the lot.

While no one has died from a funnel-web bite since an antivenom was developed in the 1980s, scientists believe it may be worth optimizing new versions of that antivenom to fit each type.

"Although no human fatalities have occurred since the development of antivenom in the 1980s, antivenom for Sydney funnel-web spiders might be optimized by considering biological differentiation at the species level," the authors of the study write.

The Newcastle funnel-web may be deadlier than other funnel-web species purely due to its size and the speed at which it can inject venom.

While the antivenom still works against the larger spider's venom, the speed at which the Newcastle funnel-web injects means that scientists are looking to develop a more optimized version.

"For the Sydney funnel web, the rate of envenoming is about 10 to 20 percent," Professor Geoff Isbister of the University of Newcastle told the Sydney Morning Herald.

"But if you look at the southern and the northern tree funnel web, it’s about three in four [bites] that cause envenoming. And they’re much bigger spiders," he said.

"So if you translate that to the Newcastle funnel web, yes, the biggest spiders are more likely to inject enough venom to cause envenoming. I suspect what they’re calling the ‘big boy’ is more likely to be dangerous," the professor added.