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John Brown, from the collection of Simon Peer
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John Brown
The other 12 percent of cases of spider kills of bats were from spiders that hunt without webs. For instance, tarantulas were seen eating small bats in tropical rainforests in Peru and eastern Ecuador and on the forest floor in northeastern Brazil. A reddish parachute tarantula (Poecilotheria rufilata) was also seen predating on a small bat in Kerala, India, while a huntsman spider (Heteropoda venatoria) was observed capturing and killing a small bat in a shed near Kolkata, India. An attempt by a large fishing spider (Dolomedes triton) to kill a bat pup was also witnessed below a bridge in Indiana.
Most bat prey of spiders are small or juvenile insect-eating bats, and usually are among the most common bat species of their areas. Bats entangled in webs were usually 4 to 9.5 inches (10 to 24 cm) in wingspan, including some of the smallest species of bats in the world, and they sometimes died of exhaustion, starvation, dehydration or overheating — but there were many cases where spiders were seen actively attacking, killing and eating these victims.
Bats are likely capable of detecting spiderwebs via echolocation, their biological sonar. Even if bats do collide with spiderwebs, only the strongest traps are likely capable of withstanding the energy of such an impact without breaking. As such, bat captures are likely rare.
Still, as scarce as spider captures of bats likely are, they would prove well worth the effort. The catch of a 2-gram bat by the giant orb-weaving spider Nephila pilipes, a common killer of bats, would be a bonanza about 10 times the mass of the average daily catch of insect prey, researchers noted.
Martin Nyffeler and Mirjam Knörnschild detailed their findings online March 13 in the journal PLOS ONE.
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