A nightmarish scene involving a wasp carrying a giant spider in Australia has taken social media by storm.
The viral pic of the creepy-crawly incident snapped in Bronte, Sydney depicts a fiery orange hawk wasp clutching a paralyzed huntsman spider almost twice its size between its jaws while perched on the side of the building.
The photo was posted yesterday to Reddit by user u/space_monster, where it garnered over 3,500 comments and a flurry of horrified reactions.
“What in the name of gene splicing affronts against god is that?” said one aghast Redditor. “I had a desire to visit Australia. I no longer have that desire. Thanks for saving me some money,” said another.
However, most weren’t surprised that the skin-crawling scenario happened Down Under: “Best part about this post? We all knew it was Australia without reading the description,” wrote one unsurprised Redditor.
But don’t cancel your two-week getaway Down Under just yet. There are five thousand species of spider wasp which reside everywhere from Africa to the UK. The most famous is the US’ own tarantula hawk, a sparrow-sized wasp that paralyzes its arachnid namesake with its sting, according to the National Park Service. It then lays eggs in the incapacitated spider, which burst out of its body, and then feeds on the spiders while still alive.
Even more terrifying, the tarantula hawk’s sting clocks in at a four on the Schmidt Pain Index. The hurt scale’s creator Justin Schmidt analogized the feeling akin to “a running hair dryer that has just been dropped in your bubble bath.”
This isn’t the first time a creepy crawly’s eating habits have set the internet abuzz. This past summer, a photo of a huntsman spider gobbling a possum in Tasmania had online arachnophobes in a tizzy.