Golden Silk Orb Weaver vs Snake

Giant Queensland spider devours snake

It's the stuff nightmares are made of — a giant spider slowly killing a snake snared in its web. Cairns man Ant Hadleigh filmed this creepy encounter in a friend's backyard on Wednesday. He told ninemsn he spotted the brown tree snake snared in the golden orb spider's enormous web. "The snake was probably a few feet long and the spider about the size of your hand," Mr Hadleigh said. Mr Hadleigh, who runs rainforest tours in Cape York and his own kitesurfing business Australian Kite Surfari, said he had witnessed some amazing things in the tropics but this took the cake. "It's definitely one of the most interesting things I've seen. I never would have thought that the web would have been strong enough to hold a snake that size," he said. The backyard battle lasted several hours before the snake finally succumbed to the spider's deadly venom, he said. "The snake kept on trying to reach up and attack the spider and every time the spider would just run up to the top of the web." "You could see the spider just chewing into the snake and the part the spider was eating had gone all black. It was pretty disgusting." The scene is reminiscent of photos taken near Cairns in 2008 of a golden orb spider devouring a bird. Emily O'Keefe - ninemsn.
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