Have a fear of spiders? A new study isn’t going to make you feel any better about these eight-legged critters. Researchers from the United States and Switzerland say they’ve discovered hundreds of incidents where these tiny predators have actually taken down and eaten an entire snake!
Dr. Martin Nyffeler, an arachnologist from the University of Basel, notes spiders typically stick with trapping and devouring insects. However, Nyffeler and Professor Whitfield Gibbons from the University of Georgia found 319 incidents where spiders all over the world added something unusual to their menu.
Specifically, their study finds spiders on every continent except Antarctica eat snakes, and not just tiny ones either! Moreover, 80 percent of these snake-eating occurrences took place in the United States or Australia. Conversely, this “David and Goliath” matchup is extremely rare in Europe, making up less than one percent of these incidents.
So what kind of a spider has the power to take down a foot-long snake? It turns out Marvel’s “Black Widow” isn’t the only one with super abilities and the strength to defeat larger opponents. Researchers find the real black widows are responsible for nearly half of all these successful snake killings...MORE
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