'Never Seen Anything Like It’: Man Captures ‘Classic Australia Moment’ as Small Spider Takes on Deadly Snake

An Australian farmer captured an image on his property in New South Wales which chronicled a tiny daddy-long-legs spider's astounding victory over a deadly brown snake.

According to ABC Riverina, Patrick Lees, a Riverina farmer, said he was startled Sunday when he found the brown snake strung up in the daddy-long-legs spider's web in what appeared to be nature's rendition of the "David and Goliath" battle. Although Lees said he had heard stories of certain types of spiders killing snakes before, he never would have expected that the diminutive daddy long legs could actually defeat snakes themselves.

"I've heard about it, but I've never seen it, let alone a daddy long legs," Lees said, according to ABC Riverina.

Australia's brown snakes are incredibly lethal, and even a juvenile snake is capable of a killing a human with its venom. In this case, the defeated brown snake was a juvenile roughly one meter long, and it was dead before Lees discovered its predicament, according to Mashable. Rather than remove the snake, Lees decided to leave it in the tiny victor's clutches as a hoard of other spiders began to join it in spinning webs over the snake's face and tail.

"I'm not going to deny them their victory," Lees told ABC Riverina.

Although Lees was impressed with the daddy-long-legs spider's catch, he said that it was impossible for him to tell whether or not the spider killed the poisonous brown snake with its own venom — which is not particularly potent — or if it merely outsmarted the snake by ensnaring it in its web, where it would later die.

"I'd never seen anything like it before. People have this idea that everything in the bush is trying to kill you, but this took it to the next level. I just thought it was a classic Australia moment and had to share it," Lees said, according to Mashable. 

Featured Image: Shutterstock

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