TIME animals

These Spiders Eat Fish Twice Their Size

Fish Eating Spider
Alastair Macewen—Getty Images Pisauridae spider, dolomedes sp, catching fish

And they live on every continent except Antarctica. Be afraid.

Didn’t think spiders were terrifying enough already? Guess what: now scientists have discovered that a ton of spiders can eat things over twice their size. Swimming things.

These pescatarian spiders live on every continent except Antarctica, according to research published in PLoS ONE on Wednesday.

Researchers in Australia and Switzerland reviewed reports on fish predation and found that these aggressive spiders are much more common than scientists originally believed. Fish-eating spiders belong to eight different taxonomic families and only one of the spiders lives underwater. The rest hang out (or “lurk,” if you will) by the water and usually eat insects but occasionally go for a larger appetizer, killing fish 2-6 cm in length, about 2.2 times the size of the spider.

Their kill method is to wait on a rock for a fish to touch one of their legs before diving into the water and biting the neck of their prey, killing them. Then they drag the fish to land and devour it.

So now we know how an epic battle between Spider-Man and Aqua Man would go down.
