Abstract
IN NATURE, vol. xxi. p. 417, there is the statement that common wasps are carnivorous. I can prove this fact also by my own experience. I observed, one summer, in a country house, where wasps were shut in a room, that from lack of their usual food, and probably forced by hunger, they caught flies and devoured them. I saw several times wasps with a fly between their mandibles creeping on the window-glass, or eating them. Generally the wings and the head of the flies were mangled. I was one day so happy as to sea a wasp catch a fly on the window, and observe how cleanly it picked the wings of the fly in order to hinder its flying away, and after having done so, how the wasp ate the head. I saw also some wasps quite prostrate and dying of hunger at last. I think that this fact could easily be verified by experiments.
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BOD, L. Carnivorous Wasps. Nature 21, 538 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/021538c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/021538c0
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