Animals: they seem harmless enough, but can you really trust them? No. The majority of animals spend the majority of their lives completely unobserved by humans, doing god knows what, god knows where. Occasionally, we get a glimpse into the horrifying realities of the natural world. Sometimes they’re narrated by global treasure David Attenborough, sometimes they’re caught on camera by American researchers in the Amazon.
Wrap your eyes around this nightmarish scene:
Pictured: Horror has a face. (Source: University of Michigan.)
That, my friend, is a tarantula from the genus Pamphobeteus carrying away the body of a mouse opossum in an entirely horrifying fashion. Not enough terror for you? Here it is again:
Pictured: The horror. The horror. (Source: University of Michigan.)
In a paper titled Ecological interactions between arthropods and small vertebrates in a lowland Amazon rainforest, published in the February 2019 edition of the journal Amphibian & Reptile Conservation, researchers recount coming across this hellish sight near midnight on November 18, 2016. From their report:
The spider was on the ground in the leaf litter holding the opossum by the neck region. When we first encountered the pair, the opossum was still responsive and kicking weakly. We observed the interaction for approximately 5 minutes after which time the opossum ceased all movement and the spider dragged it away around a tree root.
While the scale of this might not be quite what you’re imagining, that spider is still a massive beast. Co-author of the paper and University of Michigan doctoral candidate Michael Grundler, who witnessed the encounter, said that the spider was about the size of a dinner plate and the opossum about the size of a softball.
As you could maybe guess from the title, the paper is all about observed interactions between spiders and vertebrates in the rainforest, which encompassed such unnerving things as frogs, snakes, and fish.
If you are feeling particularly brave, footage of the incident is available for download right here.
