A 15-inch ground snake has reportedly been killed by a hand-sized tarantula.
15-inch snake eaten by hand-sized spider
Scientists in Brazil were left flabbergasted after they discovered the Grammostola - a spider native to South America - munching on the flesh of the foot-long slithery creature, which appeared to be dead at the time, underneath a huge rock.
Leandro Malta Borges, a graduate student in biology at the Federal University of Santa Maria in Brazil, told Live Science: ''Predation of such a large snake in relation to the size of the spider was extremely surprising to us.''
This is the first time a tarantula has been seen eating a snake in the wild as spiders using prey on animals their own size or smaller.