A video that was shot in India shows a massive huntsman spider devouring an entire frog.
25-year-old Sujay Shah recorded the entire incident inside his bathroom in Jalpaiguri, West Bengal, India.
Shah was not sure about the spider that he saw inside their bathroom, but it was later revealed that it was a huntsman spider.
Talking about why he was not scared to capture the entire incident on cam and up really close, Shah said:
I’ve loved science and the natural world since my childhood. Be it biology or physics, I’m a science student who always seeks answers and is fascinated by the universe and its laws. So I was very happy and excited because I knew I was witnessing a relatively rare event of nature.
Jason Dunlop and Peter Jäger, experts from the Berlin Natural History Museum and the Senckenberg Research Institute respectively, were the ones that confirmed that the spider in the video was a huntsman spider.
The experts believe that the spider was from the Heteropoda genus, a group of creatures that are known to have very large spiders.
Dr. Dunlop said that large spiders are capable of eating small vertebrates such as birds, mice, lizards, and even frogs.
Dr. Dunlop added:
Only the largest spiders do this with any regularity – and huntsman spiders can get quite big. But this doesn’t happen often – most spiders eat insects most of the time and none of them are specialist frog eaters. They catch what they can get.
In the video that was shared by Shah, the eye of the spider could be seen glowing as it was carrying the frog.
Shah took some videos and pictures to share it on social media.
He left right after that so the spider could enjoy its meal.
He explained:
I left the place after a while, and when I came back after an hour, it was gone. I didn’t want to interrupt it. I hope it enjoyed its meal. I’ve seen people tend to kill spiders and other insects because they’re ‘scary’ or maybe some people are scared of venomous insects. I think we should stop this practice of harming what we don’t like or harming something without knowing much about it.
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