Warning to arachnophobes and the faint of heart: This is the stuff of nightmares, so you might want to proceed with caution.
A University of Michigan-led team of biologists has documented 15 rare and disturbing predator-prey interactions in the Amazon rainforest including keep-you-up-at-night images of a dinner plate-size tarantula dragging a young opossum across the forest floor.
The photos are part of a new journal article titled “Ecological interactions between arthropods and small vertebrates in a lowland Amazon rainforest.” Arthropods are invertebrate animals with segmented bodies and jointed appendages that include insects, arachnids (spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks) and crustaceans.
Read more at University of Michigan
Photo: A wandering spider (Ctenidae) preying on a subadult Cercosaura eigenmanni lizard. Photo by Mark Cowan, in Amphibian & Reptile Conservation (amphibian-reptile-conservation.org)