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Comments & ID Thoughts
This was dropped by a wasp. Thought nothing of it until I took a closer look. Bit squished because I may have had a panic attack.
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Jan 20, 2025
- Photographed: Jan 20, 2025
- Spider: Unidentified
- Location: Tamworth , Australia
- Spotted Outdoors: Ground layer (leaf litter, dirt, grass, etc)
- Found in web?: No
- Attributes:
Possibly funnel web spider.
Sydney Funnel-web Spider, Atrax robustus – The Australian Museum
It’s hard to say what it is . The wasp chopped off its legs to make it easier to carry. I am not familiar enough with Australian spiders to identify it without as many clues as possible…..there a small chance that it was a black house spider…Badumna insignis…imagine this one without legs…
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/117552490
It’s more likely it is some other larger spider tho.
It’s an interesting picture and scenario. Owey….this gets gross, but interesting….wasps abduct large spiders and take them to places where they can corral them or bury them in a tube-shaped tunnel. It’s all quite horrible if you imagine it with humans. The wasp puts eggs into the spider’s body and they incubate and the larvae eat. The spider stays alive for awhile, physically. the larval wasps burst out of its body and it totally dies. That’s interesting, Nod, I didn’t know about the chopping off legs part. Spiders’ legs’ fluids are retained when the legs are broken off at the… Read more »
It’s extremely interesting but very creepy at the same time. The larvae are careful to leave vital organs till last…to keep their poor host alive for as long as possible…not all of them cut the legs off…just some genera of the spider wasp family (Pompilidae)…All my knowledge comes from Google.. its possible just one genus is involved…there’s videos of them doing it…but they are not for the faint hearted…I didn’t manage to finish one of them…its done very quickly…and yes …they do target the joints.
This is a Mygalomorph like Sydney funnel web and close cousin in northern teritory.
Badumna is Araneomorph.
Are you sure Dan. I didn’t think they eyes fit the Mygalomorphs.. the 2 appendages out front are female palps…not legs…the wasp has taken all of them…and the jaws don’t seem to protrude far enough to be a Sydney funnelweb….I thought anyway.
I’m positive, Note the mouth partshinge up and down, not side to side.
I will say the eye pattern seems odd for funnel web and could well be a trap door spider. Check this out.
Sydney Funnel-web Spider, Atrax robustus – The Australian Museum
Is there any way to post more photos? I have a few from different angles. I should make note that this spider was carried by the spider wasp (black and red/orange ones)
Very top of the page, next to your profile is a ‘submit’ button. Yea, you gotta go through the hoops again, but as many as you want.