Golden orb spider captured eating microbat

May 6, 2023 10:27 PM

Golden orb spider captured eating microbat in Far North Queensland. Megan Wright has a healthy respect for the spiders that live around her home north of Cairns, but admits being very excited — and horrified when she noticed a big golden orb spider eating a bat caught in its web.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (23 comments total)

Is this a coronation thing?
posted by newdaddy at 10:35 PM on May 6, 2023 [23 favorites]

"Will you walk into my parlour?"
posted by Fizz at 10:48 PM on May 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

My love for spiders and my love for bats are butting heads right now.
posted by brundlefly at 11:47 PM on May 6, 2023 [19 favorites]

phylum solidarity, imo
posted by ryanrs at 12:16 AM on May 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

*squints suspiciously*

Sounds like something a bat would say...
posted by brundlefly at 12:22 AM on May 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

Yep, some spiders do catch bats.
posted by dhruva at 12:27 AM on May 7, 2023

Can’t sleep, spider will eat me.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:53 AM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm not sharing that link, but at the site I found this one about how a lot of nature documentaries are someone artificial-- real insect behavior, but set up to be easy to photograph.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:39 AM on May 7, 2023

Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek: One of her arresting anecdotes reflects on the dog-eat-dog bug-eat-frog world that she carefully observes: "He was a very small frog with wide, dull eyes. And just as I looked at him, he slowly crumpled and began to sag. The spirit vanished from his eyes as if snuffed. His skin emptied and drooped; his very skull seemed to collapse and settle like a kicked tent. He was shrinking before my eyes like a deflating football. I watched the taut, glistening skin on his shoulders ruck, and rumple, and fall. Soon, part of his skin, formless as a pricked balloon, lay in floating folds like bright scum on top of the water: it was a monstrous and terrifying thing. I gaped bewildered, appalled. An oval shadow hung in the water behind the drained frog; then the shadow glided away". The giant water bug she is describing is probably Lethocerus americanus which preys upon small fish and amphibians.
posted by BobTheScientist at 6:03 AM on May 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

The viral marketing for Across The Spider-Verse is really hitting all interest-zones!
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:06 AM on May 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

Huh. Turns out, my love for bats trumps my affection for spiders, though generally the opposite is true when it comes to superheroes.
posted by thivaia at 7:18 AM on May 7, 2023

I love spiders, but I rescued a bee from a spider. I would probably kill a spider that tried to eat a bat. In the hierarchy of creatures, spiders are well below bats IMO.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:31 AM on May 7, 2023

> Is this a coronation thing?

I've heard of a lot of variations on recipes for coronation chicken, but substituting bat for the chicken is a first. I'm gonna go ahead and headcanon this spider as the Tony Bourdain of the spider kingdom.
posted by Fiberoptic Zebroid and The Hypnagogic Jerks at 7:59 AM on May 7, 2023

It's astonishing how strong a spider web actually is. But many insects that a spider web might catch are known for their disproportionate strength. So a bat would not stand a chance.
posted by schmudde at 8:16 AM on May 7, 2023

When I was little, my dad told me a foaftale about a spider’s web with a kitten in it found under our house years before. This later turned out to be from a Stephen King book. I think he just really wanted me to stay out from underneath there, which, fair enough. It worked, too.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:45 AM on May 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

What the folk!?
posted by y2karl at 12:39 PM on May 7, 2023

Once when I was young, I wandered through an old orchard and suddenly met many rather large round Golden Orb Spiders across all the branches. That was interesting. I backtracked carefully. Respect.
posted by ovvl at 4:48 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you live near Discovery Park in Seattle avoid walking in through the south entrance on West Emerson Street lest you walk through an endless gauntlet of such webs.*

*Also avoid it because heartless parents who buy their kids baby rabbits on Easter use that entrance to abandon their later grown big bunnies near a warren of Eastern Cottontail burrows. There is always a Red Tailed Hawk or a Bald Eagle or two hovering in the breeze above to drop upon the clueless oversized Easter bunnies.
posted by y2karl at 5:52 PM on May 7, 2023

I have rather a large amount of garden orb weavers in my garden - slightly smaller legs than a golden, but a huge abdomen. The largest thing I've ever seen taken as prey was a very large dragonfly, but they regularly spin webs across a walkway and have had several attempts to catch me fail - kudos to them for trying. It'd be the feast of several lifetimes I'm sure.

And although I'm not scared of them per se and I'm honestly no dancer but I swear to you I will out-rave any 90's kid walking into one of those. There is NOTHING quite like having a big fat body like that slap against your face.
posted by ninazer0 at 6:09 PM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Is the Golden Orb Weaver the same one as the one that eats birds (1:52)? The ones n Louisiana are quite beautiful, and deadly to birds.

They have a habit of building their webs right at face-level, which is unfortunate for all of us.
posted by eustatic at 6:10 PM on May 7, 2023

BobTheScientist, I have never forgotten that Annie Dillard scene. Freaked me out when I read it.
posted by Archer25 at 7:52 AM on May 8, 2023

Thank you for specifying "microbat", as the bats I most immediately associate with Australia are the flying foxes I was astonished to see streaming out of the Botanic Gardens, my first evening in Sydney.

That would have been quite the spider.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 6:22 AM on May 9, 2023

the hierarchy of creatures

No such thing
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 6:30 AM on May 9, 2023