Spiders have an important job to do so I usually just let them go about their business and don't pay much attention to them. However last night I happened to witness an epic battle between two spiders that had me fascinated for a few hours. I noticed a rather large spider in the house and was going to encourage it to go outside when I realized it was trapped in a web. I thought that was rather odd. I then saw a small house spider frantically reinforcing the web around it. Here they were at the beginning of the battle:
The large spider resembles images of grass or wolf spiders I found but I'm not certain. Can someone positively identify it?
After quite some time the large spider was neatly wrapped in a bundle and ready for feasting.
After a quick bit of searching I discovered it is common for spiders to eat their own kind but the size disparity in this case seems unusual. I also stumbled across this interesting research ( https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00114-017-1440-1) that estimates spiders consume between 400 and 800 million tons of food in a year.
A recent estimate of the entire human biomass comes in under 300 million tons (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22709383).
Spiders could consume us all and still be hungry. Wow.
I think I'm going to pay more attention to what the spiders around me are up to from now on.
I wouldnt let that finish kill them both while they where distracted.... Now your dead
I was too fascinated watching it to interrupt. We did clean up the whole mess in the morning though.
Lol i wouldnt sleeptill they are all dead
Welp. Time to burn down your house and start anew.
I wish you luck in your new home!
Thanks. I know some people feel that way about creepy crawlies but I try to avoid such drastic measures.