This pompilid wasp, Agenioideus sericeus ^[1], dragged a caught spider Zygiella x-notata on the floor of the back hall. My presence and possibly the fact that she was inside the house, an unfamiliar environment, made her very nervous. She kept flying away only to arrive back to the spider after a short time.

At one moment she grabbed the spider at a foreleg and started on a tour that went into the toilet. There she continued up onto the wall and then back to floor into the hall. The route continued via the wall up until she reached the ceiling and paused, the spider still locked firmly between the jaws. What she had not noticed was the other spider, a cellar spider, that hung a bit further away on the ceiling. Via the threads of her ‘web’, that reached to the wasps’ resting spot, she was alarmed by its presence and without any doubt started closing the distance. Only at the last moment as the spider started to widen her legs into a grabbing posture, and it looked like the wasps’ fate was sealed, it reacted cool-headed by calmly traversing the wall back onto the floor.

Shortly thereafter she flew away through the open back door and did not return, abandoning the paralysed spider on the laminate flooring.

Literature