A giant spider left scientists in shock after they caught it devouring a snake it killed.
The Tarantula spider eating the snake
Scientist in southern Brazil made a shocking discovery after
turning a rock only to find a giant tarantula spider devouring a big
snake.
According to a report by LiveScience,
the tarantula, called Grammostola quirogai, was chowing down on the
body of an Almaden ground snake (Erythrolamprus almadensis). It's the
first time a tarantula has ever been seen preying on a snake in the
wild.
"Predation of such a large snake in relation to the size of the
spider was extremely surprising to us," said Leandro Malta Borges, a
graduate student in biology at the Federal University of Santa Maria in
Brazil.
Borges and his colleagues reported their shocking discovery Dec. 3
in the journal Herpetology Notes. The researchers were studying
tarantulas in the Serra do Caverá, a rocky, grassy region in the far
south of Brazil. Under a rock, they discovered a 15-inch (39
centimeters) snake being eaten by an adult female G. quirogai. This
species was formally described last year, Borges said, and previously
had been known to exist only in Uruguay.
Grammostola tarantulas are hand-size arachnids, and one of G.
quirogai's close relatives, the Chilean rose tarantula (Grammostola
rosea) is a popular aquarium pet. Other Grammostola tarantulas have been
induced to eat snakes in captivity, Borges and his colleagues wrote,
but the behavior hadn't been seen in the wild. Another species of
spider, the Goliath birdeater (Theraphosa blondi) has fed on a viper,
but the encounter between the two species was engineered by researchers.
"There are other records of spiders preying on snakes, such as
the famous black widow, which has a strong toxin and, besides, rely on
the web for capturing," Borges said. But tarantulas don't spin webs to trap prey.
Most likely, Borges said, the unfortunate snake simply slithered by
the tarantula's rock or tried to use it as a den. The tarantula
probably attacked — spiders of this species can have fangs nearly 0.8
inches (2 cm) long — and subdued the reptile. Tarantulas do have venom,
but there are no studies of G. quirogai venom, Borges said. Therefore,
it's unclear whether its venom would be strong enough to affect a snake.
Typically, these tarantulas prey on other spiders and insects or
smaller reptiles, amphibians, birds or even mammals.
Once the snake was dead, the spider settled in for a feast. Spiders
digest their prey by liquefying the insides of the victim's body and
then slurping up the juices, which is what the tarantula was in the
process of doing when it was found. When the researchers found the pair,
the snake's front and middle sections were a gooey mess.
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