Who’s tough enough to eat a sea spider?

Instead of “Who’s tough enough to eat a sea spider?” you need to know what a sea spider is.

They have been around for millions of years, but they live in an environment that is not usually in contact with humans. Volcanic ash near Herefordshire, UK, reveals spider fossils from 425 million years ago. They have been here a long time. More recently, scientific expeditions to the Antarctic area have uncovered some surprising current examples.

Just off the Ross Sea shelf in southern Antarctica live giant specimens of many forms of sea creatures. In addition to giant worms and crustaceans, these expeditions brought back sea spiders larger than a dinner plate. Many had the normal eight legs, but some have more, even up to twelve legs. Very large marine life is not unusual in the Antarctic area. Scientists speculate that this is due to low temperatures, high oxygen levels, adequate feeding, and a general lack of predators in the area.

Sea spiders exist in total darkness about four miles deep. They crawl feeding on soft-bodied creatures such as sponges and sea slugs using their proboscis to suck the life out of their prey. In fact, they are VAMPIRES! So such ogres now exist in the depths of the Southern Ocean just as they did in Romania in the days of Count Dracula.

Around the time the giant sea spiders appeared, so did an ancient toad called Beelzebufo, the devil’s toad. BeBo appeared among crocodile and dinosaur fossils dating from the late Cretaceous period, approximately 70 million years ago, on the island of Madagascar. It is a monstrous creature weighing around ten pounds with an armored skin. He probably needed this to deal with dinosaurs and crocodiles every day. Scientists think that BeBo may have even eaten some baby dinosaurs; had to be a very tough customer.

BeBo is not related to any African frog or toad. Rather, their closest relatives are in South America, where they are kept as pets and are known as “pacman” frogs due to their very large mouths. Now why does this matter? Consider this: Madagascar is a long way across the Atlantic Ocean from South America. How is BeBo in Madagascar and all his relatives are far away in South America? This leads to speculation among scientists that some kind of land link between Africa and South America may have remained after the continents drifted apart eons ago. Perhaps it was through Antarctica, a much warmer place in the past than it is now.

All of these related discoveries have given rise to a speculative debate: What does a sea spider eat? Could it be BeBo, the armored devil toad? While the spider takes up as much space as BeBo, there are overwhelming differences in favor of BeBo. It weighed about 10 pounds, had a very large mouth, armored skin, and had millions of years of experience fighting dinosaurs. This is not a contest. The sea spider weighs next to nothing and its proboscis would immediately crumple upon encountering BeBo’s armor plate.

So why do we want to know about any of this?

First, the sea spider and all its giant friends can reveal important information about changes in temperature and their effect on the food supply for all Antarctic animals. Such information can also indicate which new predators will appear on the scene. And Devil Toad could be a link to what really happened when Africa and South America split apart. Who knows? Can someone find that the spider can really eat the Devil Toad!

For more information on fossils, continental drift, toads, sea spiders, and Antarctica, see the about me resource block at the end of this article.