Black slip wasp
The black slip wasp is a slim black wasp with bright orange legs. It is a parasite wasp. The mother lays her eggs inside the caterpillars and pupae of butterflies and moths, and her babies grow up eating them from the inside.
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Fun facts
Before laying an egg, the mother taps a pupa with her feelers and listens to the echo to check if it is a good home for her baby.
In experiments the mothers liked smooth things better than rough ones, and blue better than yellow.
Its babies are already very big when they hatch, so the mother can only carry a few eggs at a time.
It also lives in Estonia.
Most asked questions about Black slip wasp
?What does the black slip wasp eat?
The grown-ups visit flowers. The babies eat butterfly and moth caterpillars and pupae from the inside.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Pimpla rufipes
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Ichneumonidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Ichneumonidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa
Where the facts come from
- Pimpla rufipes (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Hectonichus. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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