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An invertebrate eating a vertebrate!
© Lou Sorkin |
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“Spiders are soup-eaters,” explains Catley. “They take their food in liquid form, and it’s digested outside the body.” When the spider bites into its prey, venom is injected into it just as with a snakebite. All spider venom has two purposes: first, to immobilize the prey, and secondly, to begin the process of digestion. (The balance between the two depends on the individual species.) In reaction to the venom, the tissue becomes liquefied, and the spider ingests this predigested liquid soup into its body using its sucking stomach. All that’s left is an empty shell, a process that takes hours. “You can find beetles or flies completely intact except for a tiny hole in a leg through which all its insides have been drawn out,” observes Catley.
Web spiders usually wrap a captured insect in silk, turning it efficiently like a chicken on a spit before biting it and carrying it away.
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