This is a video I stumbled upon this morning and it's one of those things I just have to share.
Warning alert, not recommended for peeps with arachnophobia:
The video was captured by zoologist Dawn Sturgess from the University of Galway, and records the final gruesome moments of a mouse like animal caught in the web of a noble false widow (Steatoda nobilis). The incident took place in his home in the city of Chichester, in southern England.
The poor fella was still alive and struggling to escape but to no avail. The researcher didn't intervene (what a cold hearted bastard 😂) but he did later examined the left overs of the creature which revealed to be a pygmy shrew (Sorex minutus).
He even published a paper underlying the importance of the incident:
The importance and novelty of this report are: (1) this is the third documented case of S. nobilis preying on a vertebrate in five years, suggesting that small vertebrates are likely to be a more frequent component of their diet than previously thought; (2) this is the first case of a Theridiidae spider preying on a shrew in Britain; and (3) this is the first case of predation on shrews by the genus Steatoda globally. Overall, S. nobilis fits the profile of a habitual vertebrate-eating spider.
That's one bad ass spider if you ask me. According to the numbers given by the paper, the shrew is was about 3 times bigger and about ten times heavier.
Damn nature, you scare 😆😂
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