October 23, 2008
Okay, this one'll give you nightmares
From Australia comes this story, guaranteed to haunt your dreams for many a night.
THESE amazing images of a mammoth spider devouring a bird were taken in the backyard of an Atherton property, west of Cairns.
And the images, which are being cirulated via email worldwide, are real, according to wildlife experts.
The photos, believed to have been taken earlier this week, show the spider clenching its legs around a lifeless bird trapped in a web.
Joel Shakespeare, the head spider keeper at NSW's Australian Reptile Park, told ninemsn that the spider was a Golden Orb Weaver."Normally they prey on large insects, it's unusual to see one eating a bird," he said.
Mr Shakepeare told ninemsn he had seen golden orb weaver spiders as big as a human hand but the northern species in tropical areas were known to grow larger.
Mr Shakespeare said the bird, a Chestnut-breasted Mannikin which appears frozen in an angel-like pose in the pictures, is likely to have flown into the web and got caught.
"It wouldn`t eat the whole bird," he told ninemsn.
"It uses its venom to break down the bird for eating and what it leaves is a food parcel," he said.
Queensland Museum's Greg Czechura is reported ninemsn as saying cases of the Golden Orb Weaver eating small birds were "well known but rare".
"It builds a very strong web," he told ninemsn.
But he said the spider would not have attacked until the bird weakened due to its struggle to free its wings."The more they struggle, the more tangled up and exhausted they get and they go into stress."
"If a spider gets a bird, it`s a very lucky spider," Mr Czechura said.
But wait, there're more details to leave you laying awake at night, afraid to surrender to the soft, sweet, slumber that end with you in a silk-wrapped cocoon.
A 75-year-old retired Tableland man, amateur photographer and bird enthusiast, took the pictures that sparked an international media frenzy yesterday in his Tableland back yard, near Cairns, last week.
"It was an awful thing. The spider was just chewing into its head," he told The Cairns Post.
Give me a second here, will you?
"[C]hewing into its head."
I think I'm going to faint.
"The spider's head was going up and down, and it was gouging into him (the chestnut-breasted manikin) at the top of his beak. It was still wrapping it up."
Spider experts said yesterday the photographs showed the orb injecting venom into the stunned bird.
Oh, that's much better; huge, venom-dripping fangs injecting flesh-dissolving poison isn't nearly as terrifying as gouging into the head.
I'm getting dizzy again.
Happy Halloween.
Posted by Mike Lief at October 23, 2008 07:25 PM
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Comments
Ok, this just gave me nightmares for the last couple of days... all I can say is EWWWW!!
Posted by: April at October 25, 2008 09:58 AM