Bats and spiders…it makes me think of Halloween, anyway. I’ll stick a photo below the fold of a spider eating a bat so you can get into the festive spirit, too.
It seems there is a bit of a conflict going on in northern Australia, with bats snatching up spiders and spiders snaring bats.
Ms Maclean said there had been several other recorded incidents of bats caught in spider webs but, conversely, some microbats in the Far North were known to eat golden orb spiders out of their webs.
“[Golden-tipped bats] have two large teeth that are specially housed in the bottom jaw,” she said.
“They can tell which side of the web the spider’s in, they fly in, they grab the body of the spider with the teeth, and then they fly backwards out of the web with it.
“They kind of suck the contents of the abdomen out … they don’t particularly eat the legs and things.”
I don’t feel at all bad if a bat occasionally meets a grisly end.
FWIW Adelaide, South Oz, has a bat colony – specifically Grey headed Flying Foxes – in the Botanic Gardens here.*
One of my brothers who lives closer to the city regularly sees them flying from their roosting trees out to feed & I’ve ever seen them on occasion myself.
A spider large enough to catch one of those grey headed flying foxes would be a real rmonster even for non-arachnophobes I suspect! Not sure if maybe the bird-eating spider (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath_birdeater ok, got the name wrong..) could catch one of those!
Although, I actually imagine a lot of local microbat species** could easily fall victim to our larger local spiders tho’ .. those ones so I’ve heard like to hide under the bark of old Acacia pycnanthas (Golden Wattles)
.* See : https://www.sapowernetworks.com.au/data/312344/learn-about-adelaide-s-grey-headed-flying-fox-colony-from-zoos-sa-staff-at-the-adelaide-zoo/
.** See : https://www.greenadelaide.sa.gov.au/news/2023-microbats-in-adelaide among other places.
Flying foxes are probably easier for most people to “accept” as their heads look so much like canids.
Their distant insectivore cousins have adaptations in the face for echolocation that gives them an appearence with “character”.