In a truly Australian rendition of the David and Goliath story, this photograph appears to show a spider taking on a massive snake.
Patrick Lees, a farmer from Weethalle, New South Wales, took the image which shows a cellar spider, also known as a daddy longlegs, munching on a brown snake (Pseudonaja textilis) that's trapped in its web.
Lees uploaded the image of this underdog victory to his Facebook page, “The Aussie Farmer.”
The snake was already dead by the time Lees found it, although he has decided not to remove it from the web.
“I can’t take down his trophy; he’s earned it,” Lees said to The Daily Advertiser.
“It’s typical Australia,” he added. “I saw it from a distance and thought ‘someone is going to be a hero here.’ There’s a few redbacks around, but I wasn’t expecting it to be a daddy longlegs.”
Although they might not have the most fearsome of appearances, this species of cellar spiders are actually venomous. Lorenzo Prendini, curator of Arachnida and Myriapoda at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, told Live Science that it would be possible for this species to kill a small vertebrate with their venom.
However, James Starrett – another spider expert – added that it's impossible to confirm how snake ended up in the web. Also speaking to Live Science, he said: "I guess it is possible that the spider was able to injure the snake with a bite, but it could also be that the snake just got tangled in the web and wore itself out trying to get free."
It’s worth noting that daddy longlegs is a wide and unofficial term, used to describe different species of creepy-crawlies, including cellar spiders, harvestmen (arachnids) and crane flies (insects).
Death by Daddy long legs #snake #australia #straya #everythinginaustaliawillkillyou #killorbekilled #farmlife #brownsnake
Posted by The Aussie Farmer on Friday, 5 February 2016
