
Spider Mother Devoured by Children
Clip: Season 44 Episode 10 | 3m 17sVideo has Closed Captions
This spider mother provides one last meal for her brood: herself.
After weeks of protecting her brood, a spider mother makes the ultimate sacrifice, offering her own body as food.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Major support for NATURE is provided by The Arnhold Family in memory of Henry and Clarisse Arnhold, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, The Fairweather Foundation, Charles Rosenblum, Kathy Chiao and...

Spider Mother Devoured by Children
Clip: Season 44 Episode 10 | 3m 17sVideo has Closed Captions
After weeks of protecting her brood, a spider mother makes the ultimate sacrifice, offering her own body as food.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Bring the beauty and wonders of wildlife and natural history into your home with classic NATURE episodes.Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship- Within weeks, her spiderlings are ready to start hunting for themselves.
And as they grow, her offspring and all their cousins become insatiable.
They're born with the ability to hunt together as a pack, just like their mothers.
Only now, there are over a thousand of them.
(bug buzzing) Her role is almost over, which is just as well.
Since laying her eggs, the mother's condition has been deteriorating and her movements have become labored.
The demands of parenthood are finally taking their toll.
But she has one more gift for her offspring, the only thing she has left.
Her struggling appears to mimic the vibrations of a distressed prey insect, and her hungry spiderlings descend en masse to their mother's dinner table one last time.
Only this time, she is the main course.
Hers is the ultimate sacrifice, born out of a need to ensure the survival of the next generation.
But the spiderlings are not yet finished.
They turn on their surviving relatives, eating every adult in the colony one by one until the next generation is all that is left.
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Clip: S44 Ep10 | 2m 59s | A boxer crab mother relies on living anemones for defense. (2m 59s)
Preview of Parenthood "The Greatest Adventure"
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Preview: S44 Ep10 | 30s | Parenthood is the ultimate journey, full of danger. (30s)
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Major support for NATURE is provided by The Arnhold Family in memory of Henry and Clarisse Arnhold, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, The Fairweather Foundation, Charles Rosenblum, Kathy Chiao and...


