How a spider eats


This video has been online for 9 years, and only has 358 views. That’s sad. Maybe it has something to do with the subject?

If you’ve wondered how spiders eat, they have a pair of chelicerae in front of their face that are used for injecting venom/chopping up prey, but they’re not for ingestion at all. They have mouthparts behind the chelicerae, which they then use for sucking up fluids and spitting up more saliva. The video is a closeup of a prey animal with a rather translucent exoskeleton, so you can actually see the juices sloshing around inside and being sucked out. This is cool; fruit flies don’t show much, there is only a small amount of bug goo inside, but I have seen mealworms get their guts literally drained out of the exoskeleton, leaving nothing but a hollow shell when the spider is done.

I can guess why this is an unpopular video, so I’ll hide it below the fold.

Comments

  1. robro says

    OOOH GROSS! (Not.)

    Interesting choice of music.

    Actually that was tame. I’ve seen a film of lions killing a warthog in southern Africa with sound. That was a real bloody squeal.

  2. says

    This is my problem with Spider-Man. Peter Parker just chomps his solid food like any other mammal when he could be sucking out the liquified guts of The Vulture.