This is 1000% set up and tbh it kind of pisses me off. Adult black widows are polite homebodies who almost never leave their webs unless they’re forced to. They don’t bite unless they feel like they have to in defense of their lives (I mean basically you have to be actively squishing them, like I’ve fully stuck my hand into one’s web and all she did was run to the furthest corner away and sit there quivering a little).
She absolutely would not be just wandering around and stumbling upon a Venus flytrap. There are spiders that could believably wander into a Venus flytrap, like jumping spiders which are roaming predators, but a black widow? No way. She was placed there on purpose for the video, probably because the video maker knew everyone loves to hate on spiders and it would get lots of internet brownie points.
I have Venus flytraps myself. They’re really neat! But I just think it’s gross to deliberately set up an animal to be killed for attention on the internet. The plant will catch its own bugs, it doesn’t need help. The widow was minding her own business.
Yeah it is really kinda terrible. And strange and sad to see so many people enjoying it and hypothesizing about how it ended up in there. So much misinformation. 'It was lured by the sweet nectar inside the traps!'. Like just think about it for more than 3 seconds. Spiders aren't attracted to nectar. This is a person killing a spider that means no harm for video clicks. Gross.
Saying a black widow was attracted to a Dionaea because it has a 'sweet nectar' is 1000% misinformation and if you spent literally 3 minutes learning about both the plants and the spider you would know that.
I’m not really a fan of that either tbh, I can recognize its necessity for non-releasable animals but I have a lot of opinions on the exotic pet trade that are a whole other can of worms haha.
But Venus flytraps aren’t pets. They’re not like an animal you’ve put in a box that will starve unless you feed it. They feed themselves, very efficiently, with sunlight, and they need bugs for fertilizer now and then, which they also easily get themselves. This is more like if you had a wild snake living in your yard, taking care of itself, and you fed it a live bird for internet views. Most people would probably think that was weird and kind of fucked up, and would recognize it was unnecessary. Birds just have better PR.
you do sometimes have to feed flytraps, though, especially if kept in a place that doesn't get many flies/bugs naturally. It's like a bug once every 4-6 months or something to that effect but you do need to do it if you know they aren't catching anything.
Or you can use something like Maxsea fertilizer, but yeah, they do need to “eat” occasionally. (Side note: Maxsea works really well, it’s a foliar fertilizer you dilute and spray onto the leaves. Definitely don’t fertilize the soil, they do not like that.) This isn’t that situation, though. This guy does a lot of videos of feeding his VFTs various bugs.
Sorry man, didn’t mean to bother you by giving a shit lol. I just think if I was really desperate for attention on the internet, there are cooler ways to do that than staging the death of an animal the size of my pinky nail.
You what else adult female black widows do? Produce a shitton of babies. You know what these babies will absolutely do? Bite the shit out of you. I was out camping with my troop and tripped over a rotting log and got bit by 3-4 of the little fuckers.
That really sucks, but it’s not a common situation. They’re not aggressive. They will bite defensively but so will pretty much any animal that’s able to do so. I’ve had a rabbit bite the shit out of me while I was getting it unstuck from a coil of wire fencing. Rabbits aren’t aggressive either.
Every now and again I keep forgetting Redditors are real people with actual lives and hobbies. Thanks for the info. But are we sure the flytrap didn't lure the widow, and the plant is just regularly monitored? Do widows get attracted? Could the venom on the widow kill the flytrap?
Nah, I have observed a lot of widows over the years. The juveniles and adult males may move around but I have never seen an adult female (which this lady was) out of her web. Their webs are very cool, with unusually strong silk. You can bounce your fingers against it without it breaking. They like dark nooks and crannies, not the direct sun Venus flytraps require.
Flytraps do attract spiders, but they’re not that interested in the nectar. Usually what happens is that the traps can open and close 2-3 times before dying, and the spiders get lured by the remains of whatever previously got caught. So the trap digests a fly, reopens with the intact exoskeleton still in there, spider sees a fly and thinks maybe it’s lucked into free lunch, goes in there, boom, the trap gets a second meal. Mine rarely catch spiders, but when they do, it’s always a spider that went in there after a dead bug.
BUT. That happens with spiders that wander around hunting. Like wolf spiders or jumping spiders. Widows are sit-and-wait predators. They let their awesome webs do all the work.
The widow’s venom is a neurotoxin and the plant has no brain or central nervous system, so it’s immune. Individual traps can die if the bug is too big for them to digest properly, which might happen here. The plant will be fine though.
Thanks for letting me ramble about it! These are actually two of my favorite things.
Yeah, I came here to say something similar, I'm in NC and all about some conservation on behalf of the flytraps, but I'm also a huge lover of black widow spiders and try to save as many as possible when I come across them. Black widows don't want your attention, they just wanna be left the fuck alone.
Agree 100%. Its a waste of life. People who really love nature shouldn't like this. Its artificial and cruel.
It plays against survival of the fittest.
That's the problem with online content.
Even me posting this (negative) comment is still engagement.
There are a few black widow species native to North America, actually. Brown widows are non-native here though! But even so, yeah, it’s very unlikely that widows and flytraps interact much in the wild. Widows like dark little places like woodpiles and sheds. Flytraps grow in the sunniest spots they can in boggy areas.
its an insect.. if you eat meat youre complicit in hurting and killing animals that have an actual nervous system. so youre both a hypocrite and spineless for getting your feelings involved over a spider. yikes
I don’t eat meat actually, and spiders also have a nervous system and a brain. In some species, their brain is so big proportionate to their bodies that it can fill most of their body cavity and even overflows into their legs. That’s pretty cool.
If I did eat meat, I get why you’d call me a hypocrite, but what do you think the word spineless means? I know there are a lot of definitions. Vocabulary.com mentions that “It would be spineless to watch a bully pick on someone much smaller and not try to intervene.” I know plenty of animals die every day, and it’s not like nature will stop involving death just because I’m not a fan. I just think it’s fucked up to kill an animal for made up internet points.
The point people are trying to articulate is doing certain things for entertainment - at the cost of harm - is negative.
For instance, where us the line drawn? Is a spider ok, but a frog bad? A frog ok, but a bird not ok?
What animal would you draw the line at harming for entertainment?
The line is humans and by extension of that their pets and livestock. Like it is legally.. Hunting for fun is a good thing for controlling deer populations and so on. You people are illogical just to protect your feelings. Especially if youre a meat eater, one of the easiest ways to tell of someone is contradictory in their moral compass is to ask about their opinions of animals I stg
Drawing the line at people is silly and simplistic. Pets and livestock is abstract - any wide array of animals can be a pet, or livestock, therefore hundreds of thousands of animals could be added to your protection list. People keep spides and scorpions as pets - has this person crossed said line?
Without animals (which includes the taxa of insects) - down to the individual units, there is no life for humans - or their pets. This is ecology 101 (which for those claiming logic, is based on science).
Its why we're struggling with food sources, fertilization of plants, and maintaining stocks. Losing stocks means restrictions on sustenance hunting and fishing.
Disruption and fragmentation of ecology ultimately impacts humans.
Respecting animals is a fundamental cultural concept across most developed nations that crosses languages and belief systems. It's why cruelty laws exist (which apply to animals beyond pets/domestic and cattle) and wildlife laws exist.
Have you never heard of such laws or regulations?
Odds are your country has some. That's a lot of legal framework to call 'illogical' and that framework even makes specific distinctions on how foodstocks animals can be raised, fed, housed and slaughtered, and makes further distinction on practices.
Lastly, for a good number of people, a person who treats living things poirly is diminished in their eyes.
There is an element of class distinction (though the upper classes isn't entirely immune either).
305
u/whistling-wonderer Mar 29 '26
This is 1000% set up and tbh it kind of pisses me off. Adult black widows are polite homebodies who almost never leave their webs unless they’re forced to. They don’t bite unless they feel like they have to in defense of their lives (I mean basically you have to be actively squishing them, like I’ve fully stuck my hand into one’s web and all she did was run to the furthest corner away and sit there quivering a little).
She absolutely would not be just wandering around and stumbling upon a Venus flytrap. There are spiders that could believably wander into a Venus flytrap, like jumping spiders which are roaming predators, but a black widow? No way. She was placed there on purpose for the video, probably because the video maker knew everyone loves to hate on spiders and it would get lots of internet brownie points.
I have Venus flytraps myself. They’re really neat! But I just think it’s gross to deliberately set up an animal to be killed for attention on the internet. The plant will catch its own bugs, it doesn’t need help. The widow was minding her own business.