Lovely seeing these two Australian natives enjoying a walk together.

  • Um…poor spider 😔

    I mean - great! Lovely that the wasp is so invested in his welfare. Bringing him home for dinner with the kids 😳

    .. with some fava beans and a nice chianti

  • Oh, um.. should we tell him?  ;)

    Cool video! Did you watch any longer? I wonder where he was taking him? (I mean  where they were going)

    The spider clearly isn't feeling too well so the wasp was taking him somewhere nice and quiet for a while. He might be able to babysit her kids later.

    I did. They were quite intimate, so I didn't think it was appropriate to keep filming. The 8 legged fella seemed a bit tired and had an afternoon nap.

    Nice of his pal to help him get there when pidey got too tired to walk any further. Restores your faith in the world to see two critters looking out for each other like that. Maybe you should cross-post to r/unlikelyfriends?

  • ..... tale as old as time...🎶

  • *Her. Male solitary wasps don't do any predation due to being stingless.

  • Do they only go for huntsman's?? I've only ever seen them do it to them?? But that's a smart wasp to know the right breed an yo find it as well. Nature is so fascinating 😁

    Primarily yes, cause they’re easier targets I guess. But they do also go for other spiders. A certain Tarantula Hawk Wasp will go for Tarantulas, Trapdoors…

    Thank you 😊

    My daughter had a hat trick last week when a tarantula hawk left her 3 sleepy spiders in her pillowcase: a small wolf spider, a small type of tarantula ... and a small funnelweb. The screams coming from her room were awesome!

    Dam that's a painful and deadly pillow. I would prob be screaming with her 😖

    She's put the paralysed spiders into a jar to see if a baby tarantula hawk (or 3) comes out!

    That’s insane!!! Yeah there may be around 13 babies. And it only takes roughly a few days to hatch.

    That will be interesting - she's put them in a jar on my balcony.

  • I don't think that spider's alive... 😥

    It is sadly lol

  • Is it breeding season for these wasps at the moment or something? Seen so many posts of it lately and seen it in real life 3 days ago. Such a cool and horrifying thing to witness

  • Brave camera work

  • Just yesterday I watched a video of a tarantula hawk playing with his tarantula buddy, didn't realise we had similar wasps here! What is that wasp??

    Spider-Hunting Wasp, Cryptocheilus bicolor

    Bear in mind that there are a huge number of 'Spider-Hunting Wasps', Cryptocheilus bicolor is more colloquially known as the Orange Spider Wasp.

    There are a few different types here. The ones I normally see are all black with bright yellow antennae and they'll delve right down into house spiders' web retreats to catch them. 

    There is also one species around where I live which is black with iridescent blue/purple wings. This species, known as Blue Flower Wasp, is a predator of Scarab Beetle larva. Parasitoid wasps are incredibly diverse and include the weird looking Ichneumon Wasps. Almost all are solitary and quite docile to humans.

  • They're friends, right dad... right...?

  • Heterodontonyx australis -golden spider wasp I saw one and inaturalisted it the other day- looks the same

  • You should have stomped that wasp bastard into infernal oblivion. Could a huntsman recover being paralysed over time? Or is it forever?

    Technically on very rare occasions the spider can survive the wasp sting but only if the sting wasn't successfully placed or the wasp was disturbed. Even then it can take them months to recover from a partial sting during which they are severely weakened and unlikely to live for long due to some other predator or starvation from inability to hunt.