Spider vs snake goes viral
Forget all the epic animal battles you’ve seen before — this one is like no other.
When a deadly juvenile eastern brown snake slithered its way into the workshop of North Vic Engines Cobram last Wednesday, there was someone there to save the day. Their ‘‘pet’’ redback spider. In an encounter that Sir David Attenborough would be proud to narrate, the venomous spider, slowly descending to the floor, soon had the slippery reptile cornered in its web and it eventually pounced with a death strike.
Since the video was posted online, it’s gone viral with about 7.4 million views.
‘‘One of the fellas was putting something away when they saw the snake, and they saw it was stuck in the spider web and the spider was really having a go,’’ North Vic Engines’ Brenton Maher said.
Despite the short length of the video the battle-to-the-death went for about 15 to 20 minutes, Mr Maher said, although the encounter could have started before it was spotted by staff.
Since the battle between reptile and eight-legged arachnid was posted online Wednesday night, it’s been viewed about 7.4 million times and has more than 23 000 comments, almost 67 000 shares and 29 000 reactions.
‘‘We definitely never expected something like this,’’ Mr Maher said.
‘‘When we posted it, (fellow staff member) Glen and I were both looking at it on Facebook and texting each other about it, we just couldn’t keep up with all the comments.
‘‘My phone was going flat trying to keep up.
‘‘(The video going viral) definitely wasn’t intentional, we had no idea this would happen.
‘‘We generally just put up a few posts about what we’re doing in the workshop and so we thought a few people might watch it, but we never expected it to do what it did.’’
Mr Maher said the only disappointing thing for the staff were the number of accusations levelled at them for allegedly using a fishhook to trap the snake.
He said they were completely false and the snake had become caught up in the spider’s web. ‘‘There was no hook,’’ he said. A second video posted to their Facebook on Thursday morning shows another juvenile eastern brown snake wrapped up in spider webs and Mr Maher said it was not the only time something like this had happened.
Last year, staff found themselves in a similar situation when a redback had killed a young snake, with pictures showing the snake bundled up in the spider’s web.
Mr Maher said for now, they were letting the spider reside at the workshop in case of future slippery visitors, and after all the media attention staff were looking forward to getting back to work in a quiet day.
‘‘It can hang around,’’ he said.