The good old aussie redback……………
An office receptionist got the shock of her life earlier this week when she found a 14cm long snake entangled in the web of a deadly spider.
Tania Robertson, a receptionist at an electrical firm , came in to work on Tuesday and spotted the strange sight next to a desk in her office.
The snake, which had obviously died from the spider's poisonous bite, was off the ground and caught up in the web.
Leon Lotz of the arachnology department at the National Museum said it was only the second time that he had heard of a snake getting caught in a spider's web.
It is believed the snake got caught in the web on Monday night.
But it did not take the spider long to bite it.
A red mark on the snake's stomach was evidence of where the spider had started eating it.
Throughout Tuesday, the spider checked on her prey, but on
Wednesday she rolled it up and started spinning a web around it.
She also kept lifting it higher off the ground, while continually snacking on it.
Even a fly that accidentally landed on the snake was chased off aggressively.......
8 comments:
My friend showed this page to me because he thought it was taken from my blog, but as it turns out I had a similar photoshoot with a brown widow spider in my garage!
Check it out:
http://rkemper.blogspot.com/2007/11/demoniac-latrodectus-geometricus.html
Very cool photos you have :)
That's the Black Widow!
Hello from Reddit. That's not an Australian redback - it's a South African black widow. Apart from the spider itself, the snake is quite clearly an Aurora House Snake, which is endemic to Southern Africa.
I have found skinks in a red-backs web, less impressive than snakes, although hopefully due to a lack of snakes in the immediate area rather then just the inability of the redback to kill them.
Right, like others have said, that's a flaming black widow, one of the deadliest spiders. Understand that this can in fact kill you and I hope you've taken measures to protect yourself by kill it.
With the most concern,
JJ
Let me settle the argument right now... In Australia it's called a "Red Back", In North America and some others it's called a "Black Widow"... End of dicussion..
Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-back_spider
Red backs and Black widows are related but not the same spider...
Post a Comment