Skip to main content Skip to footer site map
TRANSCRIPT

- Within weeks, her spiderlings are ready to start hunting for themselves.

And as they grow, her offspring and all their cousins become insatiable.

They're born with the ability to hunt together as a pack, just like their mothers.

Only now, there are over a thousand of them.

(bug buzzing) Her role is almost over, which is just as well.

Since laying her eggs, the mother's condition has been deteriorating and her movements have become labored.

The demands of parenthood are finally taking their toll.

But she has one more gift for her offspring, the only thing she has left.

Her struggling appears to mimic the vibrations of a distressed prey insect, and her hungry spiderlings descend en masse to their mother's dinner table one last time.

Only this time, she is the main course.

Hers is the ultimate sacrifice, born out of a need to ensure the survival of the next generation.

But the spiderlings are not yet finished.

They turn on their surviving relatives, eating every adult in the colony one by one until the next generation is all that is left.