Intelligent Design

Eleven different varieties of spiders feed on snakes

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We didn’t know that any did:

Take the Australian redback. Not including legs, a female of this species of spider is only about the size of an M&M candy. But she can take down relatively big prey such as juvenile eastern brown snakes, which are among the most venomous serpents in the world. A snake that gets trapped in a redback’s web — a messy tangle of long, sticky silk threads that dangle to the ground — is quickly set upon by the spider, which subdues the struggling victim with more sticky silk before delivering a toxic bite that eventually kills the snake…

“I didn’t realize how common this was. I don’t think anybody did,” says evolutionary biologist Mercedes Burns of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who was not involved in the research.

Asher Jones, “Snake-eating spiders are surprisingly common” at ScienceNews (August 4, 2021)

Some types of spiders can catch snakes 10 to 30 times their size. It is a hidden system of venomous snake control.

The paper is open access.

Hey, slow news day.

3 Replies to “Eleven different varieties of spiders feed on snakes”

  1. 1
    polistra says:
    August 6, 2021 at 8:01 am

    Wish I could train my spiders to catch mice!

  2. 2
    Tom Robbins says:
    August 6, 2021 at 11:15 am

    I’d rather be a snake not a spider? Think again! Very cool stuff. And of course, it just all happened randomly as a spider developed 5 interdependent systems AND “decided” to day to take on a snake… …that one survied… to mate.. This is insanity to believe and does not happen under the laws of thermodynamics of both the information and the chemistry disciplines (and simply shear probability).

    I think many fall for the Darwinian fairy tale, is that it explains what we see as a brutal and unforgiving environment…. When in reality the spider uses it toolbox of existing genes to change with its environment (in which case you can see it as loving).

    There’s a reason life is setup this way, but the details will always be beyond our normal comprehension of our world and what we are fearful of…

  3. 3
    martin_r says:
    August 6, 2021 at 11:29 pm

    by the way, lets have a look at what Darwinists say about snake venom evolution:

    first off:

    Snake venoms are complex mixtures of enzymes and proteins of various sizes, amines, lipids, nucleosides, and carbohydrates. Venoms also contain various metal ions that are presumed to act as cofactors and include sodium, calcium, potassium, magnesium, and zinc.

    Snake venom evolution, from wikipedia

    The evolutionary history of snake venom is a matter of debate.

    The common view of this history before 2014 was that venom originated just once among all Toxicofera approximately 170 million years ago, and then diversified into the wide range of venoms seen today

    The idea that venom had a single evolutionary origin was called into question by a 2015 study, which found that venom proteins had homologs in many other tissues in the Burmese python.[16] The study therefore suggested that venom had evolved independently in a number of snake lineages.

    it would be a miracle, if such a chemical would evolve once (by unguided process) … but, as we can see, Darwinists now BELIEVE, that in snakes it happened many times independently… (not to mention that other evolutionary unrelated species like spiders, platypus and i don’t know what else using venom too)

    or this one (another example of repeated, independent evolution of the venom)

    Multiple representatives of eulipotyphlan mammals (shrews, hedgehogs, moles, and solenodons) are venomous, but little is known about the evolutionary history and composition of their oral venom systems. Herein we characterized venom from the endangered Hispaniolan solenodon (Solenodon paradoxus) and find that it consists of hypotensive proteins likely used to facilitate vertebrate prey capture. We demonstrate that venom has evolved independently on at least 4 occasions in eulipotyphlans, and that molecular components of these venoms have also evolved convergently, with kallikrein-1 proteins coopted as toxins in both solenodons and shrews following their divergence over 70 million years ago. Our findings present an elegant example of convergent molecular evolution and highlight that mammalian venom systems may be subjected to evolutionary constraints.

    Of course, Darwinists won’t show you how these “complex cocktails” can evolve over and over again in various evolutionary unrelated animals … moreover, as far as i know, we still can’t produce antidote chemicals in our fancy labs, we need to use existing living organism to develop antidote antivenom chemicals …

    Antivenom is traditionally made by collecting venom from the relevant animal and injecting small amounts of it into a domestic animal. The antibodies that form are then collected from the domestic animal’s blood and purified. Versions are available for spider bites, snake bites, fish stings, and scorpion stings.

    Darwinists believe in miracles …

    Some other sources:

    “Complex cocktails: the evolutionary novelty of venoms”
    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23219381/

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