Yesterday at the girls birthday party, me and Daisy was tidying up in the garden when we saw something quite creepy! A large insect, looked to be about 5cm long, black as the night with two fluorescent orange stripes horizontally across its back. The insect in itself was not the incredible part, but it was 'reversing', pulling a huge Huntsman spider across the lawn! The Huntsman was much bigger than the insect, but it seemed to have no trouble at all pulling all that weight!
After googling today and comparing photos, I found out that it was a Spider Wasp. Apparently they are a common sight in Australian backyards during summer, although I have never seen one before. They often attack spiders which are bigger than themselves, and then they drag them along the ground back to their nest, after they have paralysed, but not killed the spider. Here is a photo of a wasp dragging the spider across the grass...
...and even across the neighbours fence!
Listen to this! The female wasp stings the spider to paralyse it and then drags it into her burrow where she lays an egg on it! When the larvae hatches, it starts to eat the still living spider! According to Australianmuseum.net.au it looks something like this:
Holy macaroni...all the things we have in our garden...!!!
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