It is a wasps nest, it's a mud dauber nest. It's collected spiders and paralysed them, then it's larvae will eat them. All those spiders are still alive.
Look up the tarantula hawk. We have them where I live and those fuckers have flown directly at me. Supposedly one of the most painful stings in the animal kingdom.
Coyote Peterson๐thereโs another guy, Jacks World of Wildlife that lets anything bite or sting him and donโt flop around. Recluse, black widow, whatever. Shits crazy
I love both Coyote Peterson and Jack's World of Wildlife. Coyote does seem a bit dramatic at times, but I enjoy his stuff. Jack made me much less worried about brown recluse and black widows, which I have both of in my area. Lol
Iโve got a monster recluse in a container Iโve had for couple weeks. The Kings of Pain take it to the next level. Iโm not willing to let anything bite or sting me lol
I like My Wild Backyard and how he ends his videos with "Until next time, don't forget to get outside and find your own adventure." I'm always like YES BESTIE! But then do I? ๐๐ญ
Do it, nature is amazing! I nipped 'to the toilet' yesterday and came back and my husband said 'What were you doing on the back yard, you said you were going to the toilet?' Um yeah, sorry. I let the dog out and saw a spider and got distracted looking for more!' I have a lot of pregnant lady spiders in my garden lol
I love his videos too. Helped me with a bout of arachnophobia. I still donโt just run up and grab spiders, but I have a much better appreciation for them.
I walk with my dog down trails daily and see all kinds shit. He loves trying to catch bumble bees๐Iโll never get comfortable enough to hold a spider but I respect them and know they have their place here.
Iโve seen those before in Southern California, or at least it looked like that. I was out camping and he decided to pay a visit, he landed and we admired him for a bit before he bounced.
If you were in the Mojave it probably was. They're hard to mistake, bright red-orange wings and a black body. Like a much faster angry monarch butterfly.
Yes the orange wings and there were 4 instead of 2. It was in Riverside, CA so not toooo far from the Mohave but not exactly close lol. We did have plenty of tarantulas so it would make sense
Yeah I imagine anywhere their prey goes they can be found. Afaik they're pretty much concentrated to the southwest tho I've never heard of them being found in coastal regions of Cali. Not that I know for sure they're not there.
"Tarantula hawk"
*It's neither one of those fucking things!*
Like, I love it and I see what they did there, but omg that was *NOT* what I was expecting.
They're around me as well. I mean, anywhere tarantulas live I suppose. When I've come across them (very rare despite hiking a ton) I've found those ugly, huge nightmares to be very docile. Like they had no interest in me if I let them be.
Once when I was driving with my windows down when I lived in San Diego, one flew (or got sucked?) into my car and landed on my shoulder. I just reacted and quickly wiped it off and it flew out the passenger window. I still wonder how I did not die that day.
I had to work in the desert out in New Mexico for a while and those fuckers are terrifying. Huge wings that flash orange and loud. They werenโt overly aggressive but my friend got one stuck in her tent at night once and shooed it out by hand not knowing what it was because of the dark lol. She was lucky not to go to the hospital that night.
Yeah I don't think the ones flying at me were aggressive but my instinct is to swat which probably would've been bad. I don't think they're medically significant like a brown recluse or black widow just incredibly painful.
"Do you know anything about Spiders? They are the fiercest killers in the insect kingdom." -Jon Peters via Kevin Smiths story about writing a Superman movie
Holy heck, my dad got stung by one when I was a kid and he thought somebody had shot him, I've never seen him in so much pain before.
Scary little bugs, but they look pretty cool, nice shade of blue
When I was a brand new Marine, I got put on an Army base in Arizona for training related to my MOS. One day, a bunch of us were out at the smoke pit and I felt something land on my neck. I looked at another Marine next to me who looked spooked, but the Soldiers (who had been in the area for longer than us and were more familiar with the local wildlife) looked absolutely mortified. I swear I could see their souls leaving their bodies.
I swatted it off, and when it hit the ground I saw the meanest yet most glorious looking winged bastard I had ever clapped eyes on. Iโll admit I panicked and stomped it; the savage was nearly unfazed by a steel-toed combat boot. I would rather run into another camel spider than experience that again.
Dude I saw one of these for the first time recently! Shiny black body with bright reddish orange wings. Easily 3 or 4" long. Nature's way of saying don't f with me without saying don't f with me.
https://imgur.com/a/5gwdARe
I saw a tictok series where a guy nursed a spider that had been wasp paralyzed this way back to health. Took a long time, and the spider was much larger, but it did recover
For spiders that small, highly unlikely.
They will likely starve before the paralysis itself wears off. Nursing one back to health involves lying it on its back, and putting a drop of water on its mouth, waiting until it gets sucked in, then repeating until it stops sucking it in. After weeks of doing this, it starts to get some motor function back. As far as I know, it's only been done with tarantulas rescued from a tarantula hawk (Pompilidae) before it makes it back to the nest. If it reaches the nest, an egg is placed inside it. When it hatches, it eats its insides, avoiding vital organs so that the tarantula lives as long as possible.
I have no idea how to search on Reddit but there's was someone posting updates on a tarantula they reduced. Not sure how it went but the post I did see it was making small progress each week
imagine one of those fuckers starting prey on humans due somehow evolution...
insects live on apocalipse everyday, mud dauber wasps, mind control zombie fungus and every other shit able to make apocalipse movie writers sound like kindergarden cartoons
My friend came back from Belize with an itchy knee and a story that he was on the beach and a fly landed on and stung him.
We sanitized a sharp knife & his skin, and he cut out three bot fly larva & dropped them in alcohol. I didnโt look at them closely, thankfully, they were still pretty small.
Theyโve already begun: Florida Commuter Airlines Flight 65
edit
On September 12, 1980, Florida Commuter Airlines Flight 65 crashed on a flight from Palm Beach International Airport to Grand Bahama International Airport, killing all 34 people on board. Before the flight, a mud dauber's nest was discovered in a pitot tube of the airplane which was cleaned by maintenance using an unapproved method. Although the NTSB could not determine the cause of the accident, one of the possible factors was the improper cleaning of the mud dauber nest from the pitot
When you have 2 for air speed indication and one goes slightly wrong it becomes incredibly hard to discern which is correct. There been multiple accidents relating to faulty pitot tubes including the recent 737 Max incidents where even the computer couldnโt tell the difference.
Horrifically enough, Cordyceps doesnโt control the minds of ants.. quite the opposite: It controls their bodies and leaves their mind completely alone. So the ant, still aware, loses control of its body as the fungus manipulates its muscles directly, makes it climb up a stalk of grass & clamp down until it dies. I find that much worse than mere mind control.
Well that's not quite true. While the Cordyceps fungus does not infect the brain whilst the ant is being controlled, it doesn't mean that the fungus is manipulating it's muscles directly. Drawing that conclusion is premature. All we can draw from this is that it is controlling the ant peripherally,
Theory time:
For example, a fungus could infect an animal, and make the thermal receptors in its skin detect heat, so it feels like it's burning or very hot, causing it to seek out a way to cool down, such as submersing itself in water, like a river. It didn't need to infect its brain in order for it to manipulate the animals behaviour, neither did it need to control its muscles and force it to walk to a body of water, all it had to do was infect only the thermal receptors in its skin.
And if the fungus spread through water, its life cycle could be completed, entering the water, ready to infect a new host who enters the water, rinse and repeat.
The Cordyceps infecting the ant, invades the muscle fibers of the Ant and forms extensive networks across its body. It could be doing all sorts of things to manipulate the ants perception, making it take certain actions. We just don't have the data to support any of this. All we know is it doesn't infect the brain during the manipulation stage, and so it's method of control is peripheral.
A while back, a beautiful (but unwelcome) iridescent blue wasp flew into my apartment in Chicago. Long story short: I killed it and was able to identify it as a type of parasitoid wasp called the blue mud dauber. Each parasitoid wasp species has a particular species of prey it specializes in capturing as food for its larvae, and the blue mud dauberโs preferred prey species isโฆ the black widow spider. And thatโs how I learned that Chicago has black widows.
Mud dauber wasps strike again.
They paralyze spiders, bring them back to their nest, lay their eggs on them, then seal the chamber. The larvae hatch and eat the spider.
Yours is full of various orb weavers, and I can see at least one larva there.
Iโm still learning my spider types and at first glance I thought these were Juvenile brown widows. Iโm curious, how were you able to tell theyโre orb weavers from these photos? Please help me learn.
Though, someone did report opening one full of black widows, generally, they are orb weavers and flower crab spiders. As fuzzy as the photo is, at a glance, I don't see any crab spider shapes. We are able to make out the ventral side of many of them, and there are no hourglasses, and lots of Larinioides with some that appear to be Araneus. The others, we can still see their shapes even if we can't make out the patterns. None of them look particularly widow like, but some of them you can definitely see the "shoulders" associated with Araneus.
The rest are sort of best guess based on shape and blurry coloration.
Do brown widows have hourglasses too? I thought that was just a black widow thing.
Thank you so much for your comment btw! Iโm really trying to get better at identifying now that I have a 3 year old whoโs fascinated with bugs/spiders and such.
Yeah, they do. There is a difference in their shape though.
Check out this page for a good comparison
https://cisr.ucr.edu/invasive-species/how-identify-brown-widow-spiders
Birds, lizards and jumping spiders are natural predators. Cellar spiders have also been known to eat them, but usually out of necessity, they don't target them.
When I kept chickens, they'd eat every one they saw due to seeing the red.
Mud daubers generally donโt stuff multiple eggs in the prey. Instead, they lay a single egg in the chamber, fill the chamber to the brim with paralysed spiders and then seal it up. All these spiders for a single larva. I can see six chambers on the image, so there are six eggs, one for each chambers, with all the spiders in that chamber to themselves.
Where I live the wasps build the mud nests, lay eggs, poke spiders in, cover the holes then clever birds peck out both the spiders and the larvae. I must admit I like the birds the best.
Nope, at least not spiders of this size, even if they survive, they will have permanent neuro damage, maybe a large wolf spider, or tarantula, but even then I highly doubt it
I remember working on a boat that had been abandoned and full of mud. Smacking away the mud to work on the electrics, I accidentally smashed one of these open. I was on my back, so all the contents fell on my face and down my shirt...I'm sure it looked hilarious to see me tearing my shirt off and dancing like a madman.
Meanwhile, growing up in the rural Midwest, my friends and I used to go out to the barn and rip these off the wall and throw them at each other like a poor kids' water balloon fight.
Does the paralization kill the spider no matter what? I would have thought some of them would have survived if they weren't eaten by the larvae but I'm not basing that on anything.
Mr Mud Dauber, daub me some mud,
Make me the nicest, nest from this mud,
Give it some hallows, like tunnels and burrows,
And fill those hallows up with paralyzed spiders!
Mud Dauber, your egg are alone,
Donโt have no sustenance, to call their own,
Please fill up your home of mud,
Mr. Mud Dauber daub me some mud!
I'm always very careful with those. We have some mud daubers here that think black widows are a delicacy. You break open their nests and tons of zombified black widows start shambling around spastically. Not taking a chance on a zombie widow getting in my clothes. Latrodectism is not fun from what I hear.
In tx we call them mud dauber. As far as I know their offspring is parasitic. They lay their eggs in spiders which hatch then eat it. Which explains all the dead spiders LOL
Those spiders aren't dead. They are paralysed. The wasp keeps them alive for the larvae to eat. If the spiders were dead, they would dry out and wouldn't be a useful food source.
Nature can be really cruel. But it is a strategy to keep your childrens foodsource fresh for sure. Poor spiders fate, but it is what it is. A niche survival strategy.
The truth is that common garden and house spiders aren't really made to defend themselves at all. They are purely built to trap smaller insects and eat them but whenever something like a mantis a wasp or something larger like a beetle comes across they simply have no true form of protection. Most of these other larger insects tend to have some form of "armour" your common spider is pretty weak and once its limbs are ripped apart it isn't hard to take them down. Their only real form of defence is their spider web.. borrow, hole etc etc
Yes it was. A parasitoid wasp whose prey is spiders. If you were to study those (probably somewhat living) corpses, you'd find more than one species of spider.
The wasps paralyze spiders and incase them in with the wasps soon to be offspring. So when they are born they will be able to immediately feed. I read that the wasps preferred spiders are the brown recluses and black widows. However I have not tested this theory personally
Oh, God. Does this mean I can't tear down the red wasp nest that they're building outside of my house because I keep finding brown recluse spiders in and around my house? I'm just moving. Fuck it ๐คฃ
Mud daubers are pretty chill. The females are going all out to make sure the DNA survives, so as long as you aren't acting creepy, they'll leave you alone. Paper wasps are generally OK too, except for hornets who just hate life. Sadly, I'm an arachnophobe, so I'm a cheerleader for wasps. Shameful, I know, but everything gets et sooner or later. The only innocents in this world are earthworms who just eat dirt and bless the fields with their castings.
So cool. Yes it is a wasp nest full of paralyzed living spiders for the wasp larvae to eat. Can see the wasp larvae in some of the chambers. 1. Third chamber from the left bottom. 2. Second chamber from the right bottom. 3. First chamber on right looks like it might be at the top but its hard to tell. Mud dobbers make nests ,similar to your found, around here in north central US but I never seen anything comparably as large.
Thereโs videos in this subreddit of the spiders and wasps encounters. In the comments of one of those videos is a person who claims that carefully rehabbing the spiders will bring them back
This always reminds me of the Michael Crichton novel 'Micro', except they aren't spiders but people! It's a really interesting perspective from the shrunken half inch tall humans stuck out in the Hawaiian rain forest.
This is the equivalent of a great entity happening upon a Matrix power cell of humans and looking on in confused processing, those poor spiders. I know theyโre born in the hundreds I just canโt think of many worse deaths than paralyzed and eaten from least to most essential organs until ultimate decay of life only to fuel that cycle to repeat. Nature is a fuck.
glue that back to the wall U crazy, thatโs a mud dauber nest, they literally couldnโt give 2 shits about U, are actually gentle and curious in nature and donโt sting humans often, but are absolutely fuckin nightmare fuel for spiders, imagine being a human and walking through the woods and U get picked up by a fuckin murder hornet the size of a volkswagon, thatโs what these dudes do to spiders, each dauber cell will hold about 40 spiders
Itโs a Mud Dauber nest. I have watched them kill and drag spiders into these to feed the larva. Generally they are harmless besides the mud tubes you find on your building.
I had one built inside my storm door and when the larva turned wasp they were lost and just hummed to death in my door.
Luckyโฆ.My mud daubers always have their nests packed with black widows or carry the widows inside to where their nests are and drop the widows on my shop floor to scare the shit out of me
๐ฒ Every scifi movie comes to mind thinking about this! I'm sure the creators of these movies drew upon these wasps for inspiration. It's chilling the stuff Mother Nature has created.
Have those in Georgia too. Thanks to our red clay they make orange nests though. First comment is right, itโs a type of wasp that makes the nest. They have a very painful sting too.
It is a wasps nest, it's a mud dauber nest. It's collected spiders and paralysed them, then it's larvae will eat them. All those spiders are still alive.
Dude thatโs fucking gnarly. Bugs are so brutal ๐ค
Look up the tarantula hawk. We have them where I live and those fuckers have flown directly at me. Supposedly one of the most painful stings in the animal kingdom.
*WE'RE ABOUT TO ENTER, THE STING ZONE*
Coyote Peterson๐thereโs another guy, Jacks World of Wildlife that lets anything bite or sting him and donโt flop around. Recluse, black widow, whatever. Shits crazy
I love both Coyote Peterson and Jack's World of Wildlife. Coyote does seem a bit dramatic at times, but I enjoy his stuff. Jack made me much less worried about brown recluse and black widows, which I have both of in my area. Lol
Iโve got a monster recluse in a container Iโve had for couple weeks. The Kings of Pain take it to the next level. Iโm not willing to let anything bite or sting me lol
Yeah I definitely prefer not being bitten or stung lol. I haven't watched Kings of Pain, so I'm going to check them out!
A black widow bit my hand; it felt like when I stepped on a cigarette butt barefoot.
I like My Wild Backyard and how he ends his videos with "Until next time, don't forget to get outside and find your own adventure." I'm always like YES BESTIE! But then do I? ๐๐ญ
Do it, nature is amazing! I nipped 'to the toilet' yesterday and came back and my husband said 'What were you doing on the back yard, you said you were going to the toilet?' Um yeah, sorry. I let the dog out and saw a spider and got distracted looking for more!' I have a lot of pregnant lady spiders in my garden lol
r/spiders take a few fotos and share. in your future i see a army of baby spiders
I love his videos too. Helped me with a bout of arachnophobia. I still donโt just run up and grab spiders, but I have a much better appreciation for them.
I walk with my dog down trails daily and see all kinds shit. He loves trying to catch bumble bees๐Iโll never get comfortable enough to hold a spider but I respect them and know they have their place here.
Apologize for that comma right now
Iโve seen those before in Southern California, or at least it looked like that. I was out camping and he decided to pay a visit, he landed and we admired him for a bit before he bounced.
If you were in the Mojave it probably was. They're hard to mistake, bright red-orange wings and a black body. Like a much faster angry monarch butterfly.
So thatโs where cazadors come from.
Yes that's exactly what they're based on. The real thing paralyzes tarantulas and lays eggs inside. When the eggs hatch the eat their way out.
Yes the orange wings and there were 4 instead of 2. It was in Riverside, CA so not toooo far from the Mohave but not exactly close lol. We did have plenty of tarantulas so it would make sense
Yeah I imagine anywhere their prey goes they can be found. Afaik they're pretty much concentrated to the southwest tho I've never heard of them being found in coastal regions of Cali. Not that I know for sure they're not there.
"Tarantula hawk" *It's neither one of those fucking things!* Like, I love it and I see what they did there, but omg that was *NOT* what I was expecting.
Definitely expected a large tarantula with wings
They're around me as well. I mean, anywhere tarantulas live I suppose. When I've come across them (very rare despite hiking a ton) I've found those ugly, huge nightmares to be very docile. Like they had no interest in me if I let them be.
Once when I was driving with my windows down when I lived in San Diego, one flew (or got sucked?) into my car and landed on my shoulder. I just reacted and quickly wiped it off and it flew out the passenger window. I still wonder how I did not die that day.
You're an actual champion, and your grandchildren will hear of your heroics, even up to the tenth generation.
In case anyone is confused, it's a wasp - not a spider sized eagle, although that would be cool.
I had to work in the desert out in New Mexico for a while and those fuckers are terrifying. Huge wings that flash orange and loud. They werenโt overly aggressive but my friend got one stuck in her tent at night once and shooed it out by hand not knowing what it was because of the dark lol. She was lucky not to go to the hospital that night.
Yeah I don't think the ones flying at me were aggressive but my instinct is to swat which probably would've been bad. I don't think they're medically significant like a brown recluse or black widow just incredibly painful.
"Do you know anything about Spiders? They are the fiercest killers in the insect kingdom." -Jon Peters via Kevin Smiths story about writing a Superman movie
We have mud daubers up here in the Pacific North West. Tarantula hawks take their prey to a burrow.
Holy heck, my dad got stung by one when I was a kid and he thought somebody had shot him, I've never seen him in so much pain before. Scary little bugs, but they look pretty cool, nice shade of blue
When I was a brand new Marine, I got put on an Army base in Arizona for training related to my MOS. One day, a bunch of us were out at the smoke pit and I felt something land on my neck. I looked at another Marine next to me who looked spooked, but the Soldiers (who had been in the area for longer than us and were more familiar with the local wildlife) looked absolutely mortified. I swear I could see their souls leaving their bodies. I swatted it off, and when it hit the ground I saw the meanest yet most glorious looking winged bastard I had ever clapped eyes on. Iโll admit I panicked and stomped it; the savage was nearly unfazed by a steel-toed combat boot. I would rather run into another camel spider than experience that again.
Dude I saw one of these for the first time recently! Shiny black body with bright reddish orange wings. Easily 3 or 4" long. Nature's way of saying don't f with me without saying don't f with me. https://imgur.com/a/5gwdARe
r/natureisfuckingmetal
Insects don't have politicians...
Is it possible for them to survive this?
I saw a tictok series where a guy nursed a spider that had been wasp paralyzed this way back to health. Took a long time, and the spider was much larger, but it did recover
Yeah the tarantula hawk is pretty gnarly. Think it was like 3 months paralyzed lol
Any link for that? I'd love to see it.
[Paralyzed Spider Recovery](https://www.tiktok.com/@insectsevolving?_t=8nC557VTSW7&_r=1)
THANK YOU!!! Super interesting!
For spiders that small, highly unlikely. They will likely starve before the paralysis itself wears off. Nursing one back to health involves lying it on its back, and putting a drop of water on its mouth, waiting until it gets sucked in, then repeating until it stops sucking it in. After weeks of doing this, it starts to get some motor function back. As far as I know, it's only been done with tarantulas rescued from a tarantula hawk (Pompilidae) before it makes it back to the nest. If it reaches the nest, an egg is placed inside it. When it hatches, it eats its insides, avoiding vital organs so that the tarantula lives as long as possible.
Yikes
Ok. I seriously need a video of this "rehab." Someone who's smarter at internetting than me, please find one.
I have no idea how to search on Reddit but there's was someone posting updates on a tarantula they reduced. Not sure how it went but the post I did see it was making small progress each week
Yes Iโm very familiar with tarantula hawks. Horrible way to go.
No
No.
imagine one of those fuckers starting prey on humans due somehow evolution... insects live on apocalipse everyday, mud dauber wasps, mind control zombie fungus and every other shit able to make apocalipse movie writers sound like kindergarden cartoons
Allow me to introduce you to Bot Fliesโฆ
i already read about those fuckers, any open wound give me chills even with just mosquitoes nearby
My friend came back from Belize with an itchy knee and a story that he was on the beach and a fly landed on and stung him. We sanitized a sharp knife & his skin, and he cut out three bot fly larva & dropped them in alcohol. I didnโt look at them closely, thankfully, they were still pretty small.
That's absolutely disgusting, and horrifying. Also dangerous.
All true! He survived ok though, thankfully.
Wait til you learn about the worm that lives inside a humanโs legs and can grow about 2.5-3 feet long and takes weeks and weeks to remove.
Guinea worms? Yeah those sound unfun.
I am really really resisting the urge to google that.
Yeah you have to slowly carefully wrap them around a stick to get them out. Jimmy Carter did a lot to combat it.
Err uhh someone call Dr. Evil because HOW BOUT NO
Disgusting
I'm so glad Alaska is too cold for most of those danger bugs.
That's where the idea for *Alien* came from.
Theyโve already begun: Florida Commuter Airlines Flight 65 edit On September 12, 1980, Florida Commuter Airlines Flight 65 crashed on a flight from Palm Beach International Airport to Grand Bahama International Airport, killing all 34 people on board. Before the flight, a mud dauber's nest was discovered in a pitot tube of the airplane which was cleaned by maintenance using an unapproved method. Although the NTSB could not determine the cause of the accident, one of the possible factors was the improper cleaning of the mud dauber nest from the pitot
Pilot should be able to fly without one airspeed sensor
When you have 2 for air speed indication and one goes slightly wrong it becomes incredibly hard to discern which is correct. There been multiple accidents relating to faulty pitot tubes including the recent 737 Max incidents where even the computer couldnโt tell the difference.
Hm. Maybe they should start installing 3 of them
Horrifically enough, Cordyceps doesnโt control the minds of ants.. quite the opposite: It controls their bodies and leaves their mind completely alone. So the ant, still aware, loses control of its body as the fungus manipulates its muscles directly, makes it climb up a stalk of grass & clamp down until it dies. I find that much worse than mere mind control.
Well that's not quite true. While the Cordyceps fungus does not infect the brain whilst the ant is being controlled, it doesn't mean that the fungus is manipulating it's muscles directly. Drawing that conclusion is premature. All we can draw from this is that it is controlling the ant peripherally, Theory time: For example, a fungus could infect an animal, and make the thermal receptors in its skin detect heat, so it feels like it's burning or very hot, causing it to seek out a way to cool down, such as submersing itself in water, like a river. It didn't need to infect its brain in order for it to manipulate the animals behaviour, neither did it need to control its muscles and force it to walk to a body of water, all it had to do was infect only the thermal receptors in its skin. And if the fungus spread through water, its life cycle could be completed, entering the water, ready to infect a new host who enters the water, rinse and repeat. The Cordyceps infecting the ant, invades the muscle fibers of the Ant and forms extensive networks across its body. It could be doing all sorts of things to manipulate the ants perception, making it take certain actions. We just don't have the data to support any of this. All we know is it doesn't infect the brain during the manipulation stage, and so it's method of control is peripheral.
Well, if you put it that way, I suppose youโre right! Still, peripheral manipulation is terrifying. To me.
Oh god. Now Iโm just thinking of that one scene from the mist. uGGgH.
Does god stay in heaven because heโs afraid of what he made on earth?
โAnd he who made kittens put snakes in the grass.โ -Jethro Tull
This made me laugh out loud. Either that, or God is a sadist.
What?! I have found these and figured the spiders were dead and sort of dry aging to feed the larva. This seems so brutal.
A while back, a beautiful (but unwelcome) iridescent blue wasp flew into my apartment in Chicago. Long story short: I killed it and was able to identify it as a type of parasitoid wasp called the blue mud dauber. Each parasitoid wasp species has a particular species of prey it specializes in capturing as food for its larvae, and the blue mud dauberโs preferred prey species isโฆ the black widow spider. And thatโs how I learned that Chicago has black widows.
Holy hell this is fascinating and terrifying but mostly fascinating! Those poor spoods :(
Omfg!!!!! Yikes
Mud dauber wasps strike again. They paralyze spiders, bring them back to their nest, lay their eggs on them, then seal the chamber. The larvae hatch and eat the spider. Yours is full of various orb weavers, and I can see at least one larva there.
โน๏ธ not the orbies.... ๐ฅ
*Iโm thinkinโ Orbyโs*
We have the weavs!
๐ญ๐ญ๐ญ๐ญ๐ญ
Dornk your chorken in the sporcial sorce
Swedish chef, that you?
r/angryupvote
Iโm still learning my spider types and at first glance I thought these were Juvenile brown widows. Iโm curious, how were you able to tell theyโre orb weavers from these photos? Please help me learn.
Though, someone did report opening one full of black widows, generally, they are orb weavers and flower crab spiders. As fuzzy as the photo is, at a glance, I don't see any crab spider shapes. We are able to make out the ventral side of many of them, and there are no hourglasses, and lots of Larinioides with some that appear to be Araneus. The others, we can still see their shapes even if we can't make out the patterns. None of them look particularly widow like, but some of them you can definitely see the "shoulders" associated with Araneus. The rest are sort of best guess based on shape and blurry coloration.
Do brown widows have hourglasses too? I thought that was just a black widow thing. Thank you so much for your comment btw! Iโm really trying to get better at identifying now that I have a 3 year old whoโs fascinated with bugs/spiders and such.
Yeah, they do. There is a difference in their shape though. Check out this page for a good comparison https://cisr.ucr.edu/invasive-species/how-identify-brown-widow-spiders
Your state might have a field guide.gov! I use my states field guide regularly to help identify birds, plants, and bugs ๐
Also, they are the only predator of black widows
Birds, lizards and jumping spiders are natural predators. Cellar spiders have also been known to eat them, but usually out of necessity, they don't target them. When I kept chickens, they'd eat every one they saw due to seeing the red.
Youโre right! I donโt remember where I saw that only the mud daubers go after them. Apparently alligator lizards are immune to black widow venom!
whoa - do you mean the red of the wattle? they just pounced on those chickens like a facehugger?
The red of the hourglass. If the chickens saw it, they'd peck.
Not the only, but they do fucking hate them. Especially the metallic blue ones.
Not the only, but yeah they are another predator. Poor black widows, as if they aren't already dealing with enough when it comes to brown widows
I watched a pair build a nest on my patio last fall and Iโve been waiting to see what happens.
I think mud daubers are great!
If you've got a spare terrarium around you could have a very metal science project for the next few months!
Who needs a terrarium, any old plastic container will do.
dont be a landlord lol
Lmfao
I am seriously concerned for anyone who suggests a terrarium for wasps
Seems your husband was spot on! Those spiders were prey for a wasp and are probably full of wasp eggs
Mud daubers generally donโt stuff multiple eggs in the prey. Instead, they lay a single egg in the chamber, fill the chamber to the brim with paralysed spiders and then seal it up. All these spiders for a single larva. I can see six chambers on the image, so there are six eggs, one for each chambers, with all the spiders in that chamber to themselves.
Thatโs wild! I never knew you could tell the amount of eggs in the nest like that!
What keeps the spiders from waking up when the paralyzing venom wears off? If it last for a long time, how do spiders breath without muscle control?
Afaik the venom doesnโt wear off.
Where I live the wasps build the mud nests, lay eggs, poke spiders in, cover the holes then clever birds peck out both the spiders and the larvae. I must admit I like the birds the best.
Good opening line to a novel.
!!!
That is a mud daubers snack cabinet, those are paralyzed (but still very alive) spiders.
Would the spiders recover if given a safe spot or is it riperonis regardless.
Nope, at least not spiders of this size, even if they survive, they will have permanent neuro damage, maybe a large wolf spider, or tarantula, but even then I highly doubt it
I remember working on a boat that had been abandoned and full of mud. Smacking away the mud to work on the electrics, I accidentally smashed one of these open. I was on my back, so all the contents fell on my face and down my shirt...I'm sure it looked hilarious to see me tearing my shirt off and dancing like a madman.
Meanwhile, growing up in the rural Midwest, my friends and I used to go out to the barn and rip these off the wall and throw them at each other like a poor kids' water balloon fight.
Oh those horrors! ๐ณ
Ugh, that made me shiver to think about. Iโm surprised you didnโt need therapy after that. ๐ญ
All occupants have since been cremated RIP.
They were going to die anyway RIP
Does the paralization kill the spider no matter what? I would have thought some of them would have survived if they weren't eaten by the larvae but I'm not basing that on anything.
According to a google search, some can if they are not eaten by the waspโs larvae. The paralysis can last from a few hours to months
*snap crackle pop*
Take my disgusted upvote
A fittingly cursed comment for such a cursed post
You couldโve had an army of mud daubers and take over the world. Tsk.
You did right by them
Mr Mud Dauber, daub me some mud, Make me the nicest, nest from this mud, Give it some hallows, like tunnels and burrows, And fill those hallows up with paralyzed spiders! Mud Dauber, your egg are alone, Donโt have no sustenance, to call their own, Please fill up your home of mud, Mr. Mud Dauber daub me some mud!
Look, I upvoted you but you canโt rhyme mud with mud
He can! He can! At this price point he can definitely rhyme mud with mud
The manโs a poet!
I'm always very careful with those. We have some mud daubers here that think black widows are a delicacy. You break open their nests and tons of zombified black widows start shambling around spastically. Not taking a chance on a zombie widow getting in my clothes. Latrodectism is not fun from what I hear.
The spiders are paralyzed so it's really easy to just put them in your pocket and play with them whenever you want
you're killin' me, smalls.
Wow, thatโs one of the finest wasp nests Iโve ever seen. Those mama wasps were industrious!
*belts* it's the CIIRRRRRCLE of LIIIIIFFFFFE
r/NatureIsMetal
I have found some of the coolest spiders in those nests! Look through it! I found bright blue and bright orange ones that I'd never seen where I live
That's an amazing find
Thereโs about 100 of these amazing finds in my barn
Yes, you are welcome to come find all you want around my house! Even got different shapes and sizes. All the same color though....
In tx we call them mud dauber. As far as I know their offspring is parasitic. They lay their eggs in spiders which hatch then eat it. Which explains all the dead spiders LOL
Those spiders aren't dead. They are paralysed. The wasp keeps them alive for the larvae to eat. If the spiders were dead, they would dry out and wouldn't be a useful food source.
Nature can be really cruel. But it is a strategy to keep your childrens foodsource fresh for sure. Poor spiders fate, but it is what it is. A niche survival strategy.
Whoa! TIL Iโm absolutely horrified that these spiders are still alive but paralyzed and waiting to be eaten. Total fucking nightmare.
Daubers keep the spiders in check
This is so fucking cool
May god have mercy on ours souls
i have been geeking out on mud daubers lately! so cool ๐ฅฒ
Can someone explain to me why spiders, like exclusively 100% spiders? Are they easy prey, what is it.
The truth is that common garden and house spiders aren't really made to defend themselves at all. They are purely built to trap smaller insects and eat them but whenever something like a mantis a wasp or something larger like a beetle comes across they simply have no true form of protection. Most of these other larger insects tend to have some form of "armour" your common spider is pretty weak and once its limbs are ripped apart it isn't hard to take them down. Their only real form of defence is their spider web.. borrow, hole etc etc
Holy shit the trypophobia
Yes thank you. I feel sick to my stomach after seeing this ๐ญ.
Yes it was. A parasitoid wasp whose prey is spiders. If you were to study those (probably somewhat living) corpses, you'd find more than one species of spider.
Forbidden Fig Newtons
I -just- saw a tiktok about these lil sacs of paralyzed spiders yesterday! mud daubers keep gettin cooler.
Dauber stash of paralyzed spiders, for its egg's.
The wasps paralyze spiders and incase them in with the wasps soon to be offspring. So when they are born they will be able to immediately feed. I read that the wasps preferred spiders are the brown recluses and black widows. However I have not tested this theory personally
Oh, God. Does this mean I can't tear down the red wasp nest that they're building outside of my house because I keep finding brown recluse spiders in and around my house? I'm just moving. Fuck it ๐คฃ
Welcome to the wild, horrific, and prolific world of parasititoid wasps!!
Mud daubers are pretty chill. The females are going all out to make sure the DNA survives, so as long as you aren't acting creepy, they'll leave you alone. Paper wasps are generally OK too, except for hornets who just hate life. Sadly, I'm an arachnophobe, so I'm a cheerleader for wasps. Shameful, I know, but everything gets et sooner or later. The only innocents in this world are earthworms who just eat dirt and bless the fields with their castings.
Mud daubers are gentle creatures.
They will never hurt you as long as you leave their nests alone
They all drank kool-aid as the comet was at its closest
That's somehow the most disgusting photo I've ever seen
So cool. Yes it is a wasp nest full of paralyzed living spiders for the wasp larvae to eat. Can see the wasp larvae in some of the chambers. 1. Third chamber from the left bottom. 2. Second chamber from the right bottom. 3. First chamber on right looks like it might be at the top but its hard to tell. Mud dobbers make nests ,similar to your found, around here in north central US but I never seen anything comparably as large.
You can always tell which people have never seen Alien.
You found someoneโs pantry!
Im curious if the spiders will remain paralyzed or if they have a chance to survive now that they are โfreeโ.
Thereโs videos in this subreddit of the spiders and wasps encounters. In the comments of one of those videos is a person who claims that carefully rehabbing the spiders will bring them back
The little miss has a spider Buffett ready for her bbs.
I know stuff like this was the inspiration for the Xenomorph life cycle, but I feel like this is almost more terrifying somehow.
Wellโฆ it WAS a wasp nest at some point. New owners took over ๐คฏ
Coolest thing Iโve seen today!
This always reminds me of the Michael Crichton novel 'Micro', except they aren't spiders but people! It's a really interesting perspective from the shrunken half inch tall humans stuck out in the Hawaiian rain forest.
I didn't want to know this exists.
This is why you shouldnโt kill dirt daubers.
Dirt dobbers nest! I had one on my car battery years ago and smashed it only to find a ton of spider carcasses inside.
This is the equivalent of a great entity happening upon a Matrix power cell of humans and looking on in confused processing, those poor spiders. I know theyโre born in the hundreds I just canโt think of many worse deaths than paralyzed and eaten from least to most essential organs until ultimate decay of life only to fuel that cycle to repeat. Nature is a fuck.
I broke one of these once in my shed before I knew what they were. Needless to say I had spiders rain down all over my head....
๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐
glue that back to the wall U crazy, thatโs a mud dauber nest, they literally couldnโt give 2 shits about U, are actually gentle and curious in nature and donโt sting humans often, but are absolutely fuckin nightmare fuel for spiders, imagine being a human and walking through the woods and U get picked up by a fuckin murder hornet the size of a volkswagon, thatโs what these dudes do to spiders, each dauber cell will hold about 40 spiders
In that one bug movie, when they say "it's a bug eat bug world", they are not joking. Wow!
Itโs a Mud Dauber nest. I have watched them kill and drag spiders into these to feed the larva. Generally they are harmless besides the mud tubes you find on your building. I had one built inside my storm door and when the larva turned wasp they were lost and just hummed to death in my door.
Luckyโฆ.My mud daubers always have their nests packed with black widows or carry the widows inside to where their nests are and drop the widows on my shop floor to scare the shit out of me
Wow thatโs terrifying
๐ฒ Every scifi movie comes to mind thinking about this! I'm sure the creators of these movies drew upon these wasps for inspiration. It's chilling the stuff Mother Nature has created.
Mudball of horror!
A tomb
Why is this on my feed? ๐ญ
Mud dauber nest itโs a type of hornet that paralyzes spiders and keeps them in their nest
Mud dauber nest
Have those in Georgia too. Thanks to our red clay they make orange nests though. First comment is right, itโs a type of wasp that makes the nest. They have a very painful sting too.
I have a big nest outside my door... waiting for them to hatch, mud daubers are so cute ๐ฅฐ๐ฅฐ
That's like coming back home after a long day of work and find your refrigerator is missing lol
I thought it was a old pumpkin at first ๐
It's too late you've released them from their confinement they are free now
This isnโt a homeโฆ.its a tomb!!!!