Wasp was pulling this spider (big one) up the wall. Any ideas what's going on here?

Lunch!!! Gonna feed the pupa.

Tarantula killer!

Watched one on the back deck of the ranchito one night. Quite entertaining.

I was wondering about the spider. Is that really a tarantula?

I've never seen a tarantula with an abdomen that big and round.

Metal

A tarantula killer has inverse coloration. Orange wings and black body.

Wasps kill spiders (I usually see Wolf Spiders) and stuff them in their nests to feed their larva/pupa. If you ever bust open a mud dobber type nest, there will be several desiccated corpses of spiders inside.

Wasp is trying to force the spider to see the new Barbie movie. Spider is faking death to avoid having to go.

That's a rusty spider wasp. It's in the same category as the tarantula hawk that was mentioned. As stated above, the tarantula hawk has a dark blue/black body and orange wings. The rusty spider wasp has orange body & dark wings.

Wasps in that family have very painful stings. They use their sting to paralyze (but not kill) a spider, then lay a single egg inside the spider. Once the egg hatches, the new wasp pupae devours the spider from the inside! It's very Alien-esque!

agdoc2001 said:

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Wasp is trying to force the spider to see the new Barbie movie. Spider is faking death to avoid having to go.

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Friend of mine used to have a dog that when you tried to get the dog to do something he didn't want to do he would splay out on the ground and refuse to move. My friend called it, "Doing the Ghandi." (Passive resistance)

13B said:

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Wasps kill spiders (I usually see Wolf Spiders) and stuff them in their nests to feed their larva/pupa. If you ever bust open a mud dobber type nest, there will be several desiccated corpses of spiders inside.

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In fact the mud dinner paralyzes the spiders to feed their larva. It is not uncommon to break open the mud nest and see the spider springs back to life.

I've never seen any spiders spring back to life but plenty of just dry husks fall out. I assumed they just killed the spider because the spider is never fighting back and just get drug to wherever the wasp wants to take it. I like Wolf Spiders way more than wasps, now that I know that they are just temporarily paralyzed, I may intervene more often.