Terrifying video shows 'dinner plate-sized' tarantula eating opossum in jungle

Spiders have been named among the unlikely kings of the jungle after scientists recorded a dinner plate-sized tarantula catching and eating a tiny possum.

Eight-legged predators have been seen “eating a surprising amount of vertebrates” in the Amazon, a new National Geographic study revealed.

Biologists recently recorded and documented 15 moments where invertebrates like spiders, crickets, moths, and centipedes, hunted vertebrates like tadpoles, lizards, snakes, and an opossum during a night survey in a Peru rainforest, according to National Geographic.

While spiders typically preyed on other smaller invertebrates like crickets and moths, sometimes they hunt larger creatures like frogs or lizards, said study leader Rudolf von May, whose paper appeared this week in the journal Amphibian & Reptile Conservation.

“Invertebrates preying on vertebrates is common, but it’s generally not assumed to be an important source of mortality for amphibians and reptiles,” said von May, a biologist at the University of Michigan.

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“Our knowledge of these interactions remains limited.”

His research team was surprised to find the bodies of two snakes that had been attacked by centipedes, but what was even more baffling was a tarantula the size of a dinner plate preying upon a small opossum.

The terrifying video recorded during the Peruvian night survey caught a monster spider dragging away and making a meal of an opossum. The footage was “a first-of-its-kind observation” according to scientists.

“The opossum had already been grasped by the tarantula and was still struggling weakly at that point, but after about 30 seconds it stopped kicking,” the paper’s co-author Michael Grundler, a PhD student said in a statement.

“We were pretty ecstatic and shocked, and we couldn’t really believe what we were seeing,” Grundler said.

The opossum is a North American marsupial with a white face and grayish-white body, with sharp teeth like a cat, and a bare, rat-like tail, generally 30cm long. It differs from the possum – the Australian marsupial which has softer fur and a bushier tail covered in fur, commonly about 47cm long.

Von May and fellow biologists studied the behaviour of the predators and their prey over one night in Peru’s lowland tropical rainforests, believed to be one of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth.

“What stands out at night is the amount of spiders you see on all sorts of substrates—on the ground, on leaves, on branches,” von May said.

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