VIDEO: Giant Redback Spider Catches Snake!

In this video, you can see a redback spider squaring off with a much larger brown snake that slithered too close to its web. The spider surprisingly won the duel with the reptile by drawing the writhing snake into its web and poisoning it.

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According to Wikipedia,  the redback spider is a species of highly venomous spider indigenous to Australia. It is a member of the cosmopolitan genus Latrodectus, the widow spiders. The adult female is easily recognized by her spherical black body with a prominent red stripe on the upper side of her abdomen and an hourglass-shaped red/orange streak on the underside.

Females have a body length of about 10 millimetres (0.4 in), while the male is much smaller, being only 3–4 mm (0.12–0.16 in) long.

Mainly nocturnal, the female redback lives in an untidy web in a warm sheltered location, commonly near or inside human residences. It preys on insects, spiders and small vertebrates that become ensnared in its web. It kills its prey by injecting a complex venom through its two fangs when it bites, before wrapping them in silk and sucking out the liquefied insides.

Male spiders and spiderlings often live on the periphery of the female spiders’ web and steal leftovers. Other species of spider and parasitoid wasps prey on this species. The redback is one of few arachnids which usually display sexual cannibalism while mating.

The sperm is then stored in the spermathecae, organs of the female reproductive tract, and can be used up to two years later to fertilise several clutches of eggs. Each clutch averages 250 eggs and is housed in a round white silken egg sac.

The redback is one of the few spider species that can be seriously harmful to humans, and its preferred habitat has led it to being responsible for the large majority of serious spider bites in Australia.

Predominantly neurotoxic to vertebrates, the venom gives rise to the syndrome of latrodectism in humans; this starts with pain around the bite site, which typically becomes severe and progresses up the bitten limb and persists for over 24 hours.

Sweating in localised patches of skin occasionally occurs and is highly indicative of latrodectism. Generalised symptoms of nausea, vomiting, headache, and agitation may also occur and indicate severe poisoning. An antivenom has been available since 1956, and there have been no deaths directly due to redback bites since its introduction.

The adult female redback has a body around 1 centimetre (0.4 in) long, with slender legs, the first pair of which are longer than the rest. The round abdomen is a deep black (occasionally brownish), with a red (sometimes orange) longitudinal stripe on the upper surface and an hourglass-shaped scarlet streak on the underside.

Females with incomplete markings or all-black abdomens occasionally occur. The cephalothorax is much smaller than the abdomen, and is black. Redback spiderlings are grey with dark spots, and become darker with each moult. Juvenile females have additional white markings on the abdomen.

The bright scarlet red colors may serve as a warning to potential predators. Each spider has a pair of venom glands each attached to each of its chelicerae with very small fangs.