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here's your creepy nature fact of the day
a few weeks ago i was birding with a friend, and while we didn't see many birds—bad weather, bad time of year—we did see one bizarre/cool bit of insect interaction.
we were watching a spider making its web, when a big black flying arthropod slammed into it—full-body, full-force, knocking the spider clean out of the web, right?
we then found the spider on the ground, looking like it was spasming/flailing a bit, then saw the arthropod slam into it again—and this time, the arthropod stayed on top of the spider until the spider stopped moving.
"that's some fucked up red-in-tooth-and-claw shit," we said to ourselves, and moved on, but—
some later research indicates what we probably saw was a parasitic wasp? which is the most messed-up sci-fi spooky thing i've learned about in a while—basically, there's so much goddamn biomass in the form of arthropods roaming around, that it makes sense for species to evolve to exploit that biomass, and thus, you'll get a species of parasitic wasp that specifically lays its eggs in a specific species of spider (eventually killing the spider), and a different species of parasitic wasp that lays its eggs in some other species of spider...
freaky designer-drug hyper-targeted-bio-killer shit! but also, what an incredibly fascinating find? nature is so weird. i love birding because even if i dip on an owl i can learn new fucked-up things about insects and that's almost as cool lol
we were watching a spider making its web, when a big black flying arthropod slammed into it—full-body, full-force, knocking the spider clean out of the web, right?
we then found the spider on the ground, looking like it was spasming/flailing a bit, then saw the arthropod slam into it again—and this time, the arthropod stayed on top of the spider until the spider stopped moving.
"that's some fucked up red-in-tooth-and-claw shit," we said to ourselves, and moved on, but—
some later research indicates what we probably saw was a parasitic wasp? which is the most messed-up sci-fi spooky thing i've learned about in a while—basically, there's so much goddamn biomass in the form of arthropods roaming around, that it makes sense for species to evolve to exploit that biomass, and thus, you'll get a species of parasitic wasp that specifically lays its eggs in a specific species of spider (eventually killing the spider), and a different species of parasitic wasp that lays its eggs in some other species of spider...
freaky designer-drug hyper-targeted-bio-killer shit! but also, what an incredibly fascinating find? nature is so weird. i love birding because even if i dip on an owl i can learn new fucked-up things about insects and that's almost as cool lol