Every animal needs water. This vital substance propels all life on earth, from the largest of mammals to the smallest of wasps.

Footage captured in Nasiriyah, Iraq shows a curiously mesmerizing scene of a wasp getting pummeled by drops of water coming from a pipe. At first glance, the wasp seems to be trying to catch the water, but the water proves to be too heavy and the wasp keeps returning to be dropped again drip by drip.

But the wasp is not, in fact, engaging in some Sisyphean feat. The wasp is rather gathering water—and drinking.

“It's pretty common to see wasps collecting water,” says Elizabeth Tibbetts, an ecology and evolutionary biology professor at the University of Michigan. “Wasps return