Australian farmer Patrick Lees happened upon quite the sight recently when he came across this daddy long legs spider eating the remains of an extremely lethal, three-foot long brown snake on his property in New South Wales. Lees captured the above image and posted it to the farming and agriculture Facebook page, The Aussie Farmer, with the reminder that “everything in Australia will kill you.”
He later told ABC News that while he had heard about spiders catching snakes, he had never seen it, “let alone a daddy-long-legs.” Instead of setting his entire property on fire like a rational person would do, Lees decided to leave the snake in the spider’s web, where its spider friends were already spinning a web over the snake’s face and tail, saying that he “wasn’t going to deny them of their victory.”
As far as how the daddy-long-legs overcame the snake in the first place is another subject altogether.
The Australian Museum’s arachnology collections manager Graham Milledge said while it was not clear exactly how the snake had died, it was quite possible the spider was responsible.
“The most likely scenario is that the snake got entangled in the spider’s web. Usually what happens then is the spider will try to wrap the snake and then they’ll bite it,” Mr Milledge said.
Sorry for the nightmares, everyone. But if you think about it, it’s been almost a year since a spider has been documented eating a snake in Australia, so we were really kind of overdue here.