Hello.

howdy

I am doing several things at the same time, though, so I might not respond quickly.

so about the wasps :)

no worries. im at work, so im in and outmyself

but i used to live at my grandparents for awhile when i was younger, and they had 3 acres of land. lots of trees and stuff on it

i could find wasps pretty easily chewing on wooden stakes he used to prop up tree branches

since they needed wood pulp to make their nests

i kept my spiders in large plastic jars, so i could just open the lid on one side and put the opening around the wasp sitting on the wooden stake and gently nudge the stake to make the wasp fly off back into the jar

then i would just close the lid and wait

Hi! (better late than never, I suppose)

Impressive.

@Mithrandir24601 hello :)

I'm surprised those wasps let themselves be caught to easily.

I'm used to their being aggressive and fast.

mainly yellow jackets. they are pretty tame as far as some wasps go. kinda oblivious when they are chewing on wood

you can hear it when they are munching on the wood, then a little bump wood make them fly back into the container where i could swiftly close the lid and trap them

not sure if i was brave or stupid back then :P

Haha, probably both.

Perhaps wasps are more aggressive here.

could be.

i recently learned that black widows actually have several style webs they build, and will change between them frequently

when i was younger, i kinda just assumed black widows just catch flies and stuff that are dumb and run into their webs, but they actually have special designs of webs they use to trap and catch bugs

and they are surprisingly adept at catching bugs that are walking on the ground

they essentially make like rope snare traps (like the ones you see in comics that leave the person dangling in the air, upside down, by their leg) by attaching very taunt strands of web to the ground. and the end has basically a bunch of glue on it (really sticky web)

then when something steps on it, it will detach from the ground and yoink the bug up into the web and just have it dangle there while the spider comes down and wraps it up

Impressive.

I didn't know that.

I have seen how they masterfully use their threads to envelop other insects in direct confrontation. They use their legs to wind the threads around them.

yeah, they got some long bristle hairs on their rear legs to help throw web better

but ive also noticed they dont necessarily spin web on them the way you expect, or at least i would expect

i fed mine which is still rather quite small and still juvenile a beetle about 2-3 times its size

it used the trap method to pull it up into its web, then just continually webbed only the stuck foot of the beetle

i was expecting it to try and web the whole thing, but it only webbed it so it couldnt break its leg free

then when the beetle would stop struggling to rest a bit, it would sneak in for a bite

it just sat there patiently, occasionally rewebbing the stuck foot, or injecting some more venom until the beetle finally died to the combination of exhaustion/venom

Smart.

yeah, i kept thinking it was going to wrap the entire thing in web, but after awhile i realized, it didnt need to. as long as it could keep the beetle there, once the venom eventually took affect, it wouldnt matter if it was fully webbed or not

and the spider wouldve wasted a ton of webbing trying, since it was a large beetle and probably wouldve taken a lot of web to fully wrap

Hmm.

The ones I saw in this video series did wrap threads all around their victims.

Until they could no longer move.

were they mature black widows? and how large in comparison to the spider were the prey? i recall you mentioning something about an aussie youtuber, i saw one that was feeding other large spiders and like praying mantises to his spiders, and they didnt full wrap those