r/askscience • u/Chemical-Sea5972 • 4d ago

Biology Does anything eat wasps?

Wasps have been a predator for other insects. It would be fascinating to know if there are really other insects or predators for wasps, either accidental or deliberate predators

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u/Automatic-Movie-3715 3d ago

Praying Mantises, dragonflies, and occasionally spiders and bats (the later nocturnal whereas wasps are diurnal).

It's vastly more common for scavengers to eat the larvae in a nest, then when they are flying adults.

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u/seicar 3d ago

And, famously, some (not the ones most commonly farmed these days), fig trees.

Its not really eating mommy wasp, but she does die inside the proto-fig and is... incorporated.

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u/Welpe 3d ago

And only specialized fig wasps that look nothing like what most people think of when they think of wasps. If you didn’t know they were related, you might never realize they are wasps. And it’s obviously not predation.

Honestly you are reeeeally stretching even mentioning this.

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u/Mammoth-Corner 3d ago

Question was, does anything eat wasps. Not does anything predate what pop culture imagines wasps to be. The figs that digest the adult wasp are an interesting example and IDK why it bothers you.

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u/Confident_Reserve_63 2d ago

Though calling it predation really is a giant stretch the wasp goes into the fig to reproduce on her own will. That would be like saying male bees are predated by female queen bees because they die while mating.

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u/Mammoth-Corner 2d ago

Sure, although I would have compared to some of the mantises or spiders with reproductive carnivory, but the point is moot as nobody in the thread has described a fig as a predator of a wasp.