Spiders eat snakes all over the world

[FfFfFfFF 58,371]

Could a spider kill and eat a snake?

The question might sound like a schoolyard hypothetical, but it’s the topic of a new study published in the Journal of Arachnology. The answer is a resounding yes—so much so that even the scientists who conducted the study were stunned by their results.

“I was surprised that snake-eating by spiders can be found on all continents (except Antarctica),” says study leader Martin Nyffeler, a spider expert at the University of Basel in Switzerland. “I was surprised that so many different spider groups are capable of killing and eating snakes. I was surprised that so many different snake species are occasionally killed by spiders.”

“All of this was unknown before,” says Nyffeler in an email.

In all, Nyffeler and his co-author J. Whitfield Gibbons, scoured every piece of scientific literature they could find, as well as social media sites, news coverage, and even old issues of National Geographic, to unearth more than 300 observations of spiders killing snakes. The data encompassed more than 40 spider species and more than 90 snake species.

A spider family known as the theridiids, which includes black widows and their kin, were responsible for capturing the most snakes. Even more curious, the vast majority of these reports happened not in the tropics, but across North America.

The research also significantly expands our knowledge of spider predation, which could play a bigger role in the balance of the ecosystem than previously thought, Nyffeler adds.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/spiders-eat-snakes-around-the-world-surprising-study-reveals

[Jill 31,812]

They're all gonna be dead in a few years thanks to climate change so why bother thinking about balancing the ecosystem  

[TimisaMonster 31,073]

Spiders...ugh I don't like them or what they represent but I know they are there to balance the insect population