This big buck is walking around with real-life Halloween decorations tangled in its antlers and doesn’t even know it.
In a world of artificial intelligence videos running rampant online, I had to make sure I wasn’t being fooled by the internet with this footage. I’m happy to share that the footage of this sizable buck with a spider hanging from its antlers is real, and it’s the stunning work of a wildlife photographer by the name of Edward Wall.
His main focus is waterfowl and wildlife, and he partners with Mossy Oak and contributes to Ducks Unlimited. It’s easy to see why two of the bigger outdoor brands like to work with him… Wall does some incredible stuff.
With this video, the wildlife photographer captured a massive buck on camera, and that alone is impressive. But Wall likely couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw something hanging from one side of the deer’s rack: a sizable spider in what looks to be a freshly woven web.
It’s one of those situations where, if it does happen out in the wild, we humans rarely ever get to see it. I’ve certainly never seen a spider set up shop within a deer’s antlers until now. And it reminds me of the different kinds of symbiotic relationships we all learned about in school: mutualism, commensalism and parasitism.
If you need a bit of a refresher, mutualism is where two species benefit from their interaction, commensalism is where one benefits while the other isn’t harmed, and parasitism is… well, a bit self-explanatory. That’s the one sided relationship where the parasite benefits at the expense of the other.
A spider weaving a web in a deer’s antlers would probably fall underneath mutualism or commensalism, so long as the spider doesn’t bite the deer. It’s a fascinating thing to witness, and we’ve all got Edward Wall to thank for being in the right place at the right time with a camera:
“The Spider Buck. It’s crazy to think of all the things that happen in the wild that we never get to see. I feel fortunate that I was able to capture this rare moment.”
How about that?
It has to be one of the coolest outdoor moments to ever be captured on camera, right? I’ve sat here and watched it a dozen times, and it looks like everyone in the comments is in a similar state of amazement:
“I would have went straight to casino and put it all on red after dropping the footage safely.”
“That’s probably the coolest thing I’ve seen on a deer pic.”
“He looks a lot more majestic than I did when I walked through a spider web.”
“I’ve seen a lot of sh*t in the whitetail woods, but that one might take it.”
“Horse flies ain’t got a chance with this buck.”
That’s actually a really good shout. There’s a good chance the deer isn’t even aware that the spider is up there (which would means it’s commensalism). But if that arachnid is helping to take care of pesky bugs, it’d probably be more than happy for the spider to stick around… and would be the perfect representation of mutualism.
