Sometimes my spiders make me queasy. This is the reality of nature, though.
I fed my Parasteatoda a mealworm this morning, and sadly, the spider was not particularly effective in killing its prey. It’s been gnawing on the worm for over 4 hours, while it writhes and twitches. It was frantically writhing away most of the day as the spider clung to it, nibbling.
Spiders are predators, you know.
The image quality is bad because I recorded it through the plexiglas of its container. At least it blunts the horror.
Definitely not for kids.
Anything you can do to end the mealworms suffering without depriving yor spider of food here?
Any known mealworm anesthetic that could work without harming the archnid?
Maybe the spider is a psychopath and was torturing the worm, perhaps thinking it was a politician.
Which reminds me, Mike Pillow is suing the MN election officials.
What’s he using for money this time? A promise that the last set of suits will pay out?
It is the reality of nature, but it shouldn’t be.
It reminds me of the time I plopped a juicy big Cuban tree frog into the den of my ribbon snake and didn’t quite account for limits of jaw accommodation. Woke up to the sounds of an unhappy frog and wound up peeling the snake off its rear. Lesson learned.
I thought spiders sucked, not nibbled.
Spiders don’t have sucking mouthparts. They drink fluids that flow out of their prey by capillary action, and that ooze out by pressure which can be increased by injection of digestive fluids.
That’s exactly what those malicious plutocrats running this country are trying to do to us!