This tumblr meme got postedin a bug group today and I had fun explaining the actual biology going on so I’m just gonna paste it here too!!

SO:

Believe it or not, that venom actually did evolve for hunting little tiny prey. A rat can blind or maim even a larger snake in the blink of an eye if it bites the right spot. A mouse needs to only chomp a single gash into a larger spider and the spider is doomed. Tiny fish and shrimp can tear through the soft body of a box jelly or swim away so hard they take a tentacle with them!

Worse, if prey is pumped full of venom and still escapes, the predator loses a ton of energy it took to make that venom. Even if it didn’t get hurt in the scuffle it is instantly weaker and hungrier, and many venom-reliant predators starve to death this way.

And STILL worse: odds are just as likely the creature they come across when they’re hungry is *another venomous predator.* What’s a scorpion encounter most often in a desert? Other scorpions, tarantulas, centipedes and snakes.

That’s actually scarier than the herd of elephants. That’s like if you had literally nothing to eat but extremely large, furiously angry badgers, and you got to pick any kind of gun to hunt them with, but you had to actually make the ammunition from scratch, I mean you gotta actually forge the ore into the bullets or something. The smart thing to do is pick a weapon that seems like total overkill, so even though it’s harder to make, a single hit GUARANTEES a meal while you craft the next bullet. Don’t ask why you’re alone in an apocalyptic wasteland with nothing but badgers, ore and a forge, but now you know how the funnelweb spider has to live.