I was waiting for this thread to show up. I want to add from week ago Spider Eats Snake.
Perhaps you were referring to this little beastie?
In reference to the OP’s spider, I wonder if the web spider killed the bird with venom or if the bird just died of fright or exposure before becoming dinner?
Any chance a monstrous spider like that can eat cane toads?
The only thing that acceptable to feed to a Goliath Birdeater is lead, preferably at high velocity.
I like spiders but…HOLY JEEBUS FUCK ON A POGO STICK!!
I’m okay with the idea of spiders which live outside eating bugs. I’m even barely okay with the ones that live in the rafters of my cabin, out of reach, eating bugs.
But daaaaaaaayum! That’s just horrifying! But…go spider! I mean, if it can eat a bird, why shouldn’t it?
Did anyone else happen to click on the mouse chomping snake? The bunny snorfing heron? Or the duck shredding seal? The spider still squick you out? It’s all about the web, innit?
For a different take, click on the “hug from a lion” link, watch the video and read the story. Amazing.
Becase many neurotoxins function in roughly similar ways in vertebrates as they do in invertebrates. The level of efficacy may vary, but a given venom may coincidentally be pretty toxic to non-standard prey. You’ll see the same toxin popping up over and over in different groups - the tetrodotoxin that evolved in the puffer fish also quite separatetly evolved as tarichatoxin in newts. Also in some octopi, worms and other critters, both for offensive and defensive purposes. It’s just highly effective across the board.
When I was taking a medical entomology, back in the days of cave paintings and rampant volcanism, my professor talked about some of the random experiments they used to run measuring biotoxicity. In one he found that a common jumping spider’s venom was absolutely deadly to a house mouse - poor little guy just flat keeled over after a single bite. No salticid spider in the history of this planet has ever made a career of preying on mice. But their venom works fine on them just the same.
This is definitely not a good trend.
So if you’re freaked by a spider eating a small bird, since these large spiders normally prey on large insects…
…how about this large insect which itself can also prey on birds?
An account from Bird Watcher’s Digest
And a YouTube video
So, what’re the odds in a battle of Gold Orb Weaver vs. Preying Mantis?
Clearly not the words of someone who lives with snakes. 10 cm is a tiny snake - probably a baby. We have lots of red-backs and lots of snakes, and the red-backs are not winning the war! Like the golden orb weaver’s bird, the snake will not be its preferred food.
There are quite a few of you who need my next book - how to love spiders. Think of the size of you and the size of them! If you were a spider and a HUGE bird or MASSIVE snake came into your web - birds and snake both eat spiders - what would you do? It’s called defense. Mind you, my obsessive spider-loving hits snags when they eat each other. The daddy long-legs above my head at the moment, and her male, bailed up a white-tailed spider (harmless to us despite the widely believed myth) and battled it for three days before I couldn’t stand it any more and rescued it. Mama long-legs has a new egg sac as of yesterday. So there will be babies in the kitchen in a few weeks!
As for the potency of the bite on us - you can’t lump mammals together as a group. Mind you, birds and snakes are not mammals. The Australian funnel-web will kill us, but is harmless to cats. Our very common wolf spider is pretty harmless to us, but potentially deadly to dogs. But the reason dogs aren’t dying everywhere of wolf spider bites is that the spider will always go the other way given half a chance.
The Australian tarantula - not a docile guy like the American ones - are just starting to be kept as pets. No danger to us, but can be fatal for cats and dogs.
My mission in life is to convert the entire world to loving spiders with my book. My editor is a new convert. That’s one. A few more to go judging by this thread.
Nature though has the final laugh in Australia. Human beings can’t last a minute in the wild, everything is poisonous or fanged, or has poisonous fangs. Introduce the animals kept as cuddly pets in Europe though and the ecosystem goes to pieces. Rabbits, cats, they go down under and are transformed.
The other links from that Telegraph article are great too; “Leopard savaging a crocodile caught on camera, mouse bites snake to death, heron catches rabbit: Dramatic photos”. Dramatic to say the least.
Hell, a *toad *can conquer Australia.
If I were in charge of naming spiders, that one would be called, the Unremitting, Pants-Shitting Terror!
Seriously, I will never go to Australia. I fully expect to be bitten by something that is so toxic, it kills a family member in the states!
To be fair, the cane toad (Bufo marinus) is an absurdly poisonous piece of crap that will kill just about anything that tries to eat it. Bufotenin would get you high (similar to DMT and psilocin), but it’s mixed with so much other junk you’d die first.
(Interesting thing about psilocin, which is found in all the more interesting mushrooms:
That means Albert Hoffmann*, the guy who accidentally discovered what LSD does to humans (he was looking for a heart medicine at the time and accidentally neglected to get the final few micrograms off his fingers), got paid to shroom in order to better isolate yet another psychoactive chemical.)
*(It’s always amused me how the 1960s had three guys named Hoffman[n], all linked to each other: Albert Hoffmann, who discovered LSD; Abbie Hoffman, who used it as a mechanism of social change; and Julius Hoffman, the judge who heard the trial of Abbie Hoffman (and whom Abbie called a Nazi) when he was one of the Chicago Seven.)
I dunno, I think spiders are cool*. Now come back when you find one that can challenge a medium size dog and we’ll nuke it from space
*esp webspinners, how hard are they to avoid
Oh, please. Goliath birdeaters are wonderful creatures.
Treat them with respect and you’ll be safe. They only go out of their way to eat the smallest of mammals.
Yay! Arachnophiles unite!!!
Sign me up! (I’m partial to Jumping Spiders myself.)