I was washing the outside of the windows today and noticed a spider wrestling with soemthing in its web. Closer inspection reveled that this spider had another spider firmly gripped in it jaws :eek: It struggled briefly in the web before being dragged off into a crack between the windowframe and the wall to who knows what fate!
I had no idea spiders actually did this. The sight of the smaller spider gripped in the others jaws being dragged off was a bit disconcerting.
Even more disconcerting to realize it was probably a female who was about to devour her erstwhile paramour.
more likely: he was the post-coital snack. Love 'em and eat 'em…
Spiders don’t make distinctions if an intruder happens to be caught in their webs. To them anything and everything is considered food and is to be bitten and killed. There are certain species of spider where the female will let the new born spiderlings use her as a food source.
There are also a few species of spiders who build so called “communal webs” which are sewn together to form one great big web, but each spider in this big web tends to have its own territory, which it leaves at its own peril.