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Crab battle snake2/20/2023 ![]() ![]() The smudge in the video which some claim to be a fish hook is actually a piece of lint or trash stuck in the spider's powerful web. “We don’t harm animals,” Maher says, adding that they certainly didn’t fake the scene to increase business. In fact, some of the millions of Facebook viewers think the sight strains credulity: believing the video was staged by embedding a fish hook in the struggling snake, many have condemned North Vic Engines. Widow spiders’ webs are marvels of natural engineering, but vertebrates are usually able to break free. “If you pull your fingers through the silk, it’s almost like you’re tearing through fibers of paper,” says Paula Cushing, the curator of invertebrate zoology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. These web threads are covered in droplets of glue, secreted by another of the spider’s up to seven specialized silk glands. The genus Latrodectus, which also includes the five black widow spiders found in the United States, is known for spinning messy but especially strong webs: the resilient, elastic silk capture threads reach all the way to the ground and ensnare hapless insects, centipedes, or even other spiders. ![]() The spider in this video is a female redback ( Latrodectus hasselti), easily identified by the vivid red marking on her bulbous abdomen. While spiders are efficient predators, however, the outcome of this rare occurrence came down to pure chance. ( Watch an eastern brown snake swallow a carpet python.)Īlthough the video ends with the outcome of the battle still unclear, the tiny spider did in fact vanquish its outsized foe, confirms Brenton Maher, an employee of North Vic Engines who was present when the video was filmed. As the thrashing snake attempts to free itself, the spider dances closer, eventually managing to administer a bite that seems to temporarily immobilize the snake. In reality, this spider just got very, very lucky.Ī video filmed in an engine shop in Victoria, Australia shows what appears to be a young eastern brown snake caught in the nearly-invisible web of a redback spider-“our pet redback,” the videographers joke in the Facebook caption. It has all the makings of a fight night special: with speed and skill, a scrappy redback spider takes down an eastern brown snake over ten times its size. ![]()
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