We built the Sydney Funnel Web Spider up in our last blog, only to now tear it down and call it sucky in this one! But sadly it’s the truth, they do suck and they have to as they don’t have any teeth for chewing their food.
When they’ve found dinner, which is usually other creepy crawlies such as beetles and cockroaches, they rear up with a whole lot of attitude and stab their fangs down and into their prey delivering a powerful venom that paralyses it. This sounds impressive and it’s awesome to watch, but without any teeth how do they eat it?
This is how it all goes down…The crafty spider spits digestive juices into the holes made by the fangs, which turn it’s internal body bits into mush. Muscles on the outside of its specially designed stomach then contracts. This increases the volume of the inside of the stomach and creates a vacuum that allows the spider to suck up the gooey body bits like a milkshake.
A series of hairs, which decrease in size across its mouth, filter out all the chunks, because no-one, not even a spider likes lumps in their milkshake!
