Species of the Week #1: The Tarantula Hawk
September 25th, 2007
This is the first in a (weekly!) series of posts about interesting/creepy/crawly/mushy/furry/woody species I come across in my zoological hypertext travels.
As I’m sure you’re aware, spiders are the bad-asses of the Arthropod world. They sit around in their nests and webs and eat insects like they’re going out of style. Of the 40,000 species of spider, Tarantulas (Family Theraphosidae) are probably the most well known and feared. Most people in their right mind will not screw with a Tarantula, but the Species of the Week is not a person. Its a big fucking wasp.
Tarantula Hawk Wasps (Genus Pepsis) enjoy long flights on the beach, wildflowers, shopping for the latest aposematic fashions, and laying eggs in the bodies of paralyzed male Tarantulas. They make short work of unsuspecting Tarantulas by stinging and injecting them with powerful venom:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D56lxph_WlI&mode=related&search=[/youtube]
Tarantula’s aren’t the only thing Pepsis wasps sting. In fact, they have the #2 most painful sting in the world according to the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Schmidt, on the experience of being stung by a Pepsis wasp:
Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath (if you get stung by one you might as well lie down and scream).
Ye-ouch! Anyway, once a Pepsis egg is laid in a paralyzed Tarantula’s body it develops over time into a squirming larva. The larva will slowly eat the (still living!) Tarantula until it has sufficient nutrients with which to pupate, and become an adult.
Now if that isn’t a gross life cycle, I don’t know what is. I’m really quite glad I live nowhere near these things, cool as they are.
Hope you enjoyed Species of the Week #1! Next week: monkey + (cat x raccoon) + bee = ???
September 26th, 2007 at 1:27 am
Question: Does the spider die before or after the pupate grows to an adult?
2nd Question: How do we stop this hellish beasts before they lay their eggs on us, and eat US alive?
TO ARMS!
September 26th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
From the Wikipedia article:
“The wasp larva, upon hatching, begins to suck the juices from the still-living spider. After the larva grows a bit, the spider dies and the larva plunges into the spider’s body and feeds, avoiding vital organs for as long as possible to keep it fresh.”
After this, the larva will spin a cocoon and transform into a pupa, most likely inside the body of the spider. So to answer your question: the spider probably surcomes to infection or loss of haemolymph (insect blood) after the larva plunges into its body.
2nd Question: Seeing as we are in Canada, the best way to avoid Pepsis wasps is to stay far above the 49th parallel
.
December 16th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Freaky as this is, in the insect world it gets even freakier! In addition to venom, certain ichneumon wasps inject an AIDS-like virus into the host, to cripple the immune system long enough for the egg to hatch! These wasps have long ovipositors tipped with zinc and manganese to bore through inches of wood. As Commander Spock would say, “Fascinating!”
October 25th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
The pain index referred to is seriously flawed i.e., neglected aspect fallacies! No mention of giant Japanese hornet. No mention of Australian bulldog ant (30 stings said to be fatal, yet Brazilian natives put their hands into a glove containing hundreds of bullet ants, become delirious, but recover); it rates harvester ant as a 3, and equates the common red wasp as equal in pain (I have been hit by both—the wasp is easily the more severe, probably due to larger size). Cow killer ants (wingless wasps) are not mentioned and THAT is a glaring omission! It also fails to mention the giant cicada killer wasp whose sting is “one of the most severe of any insect” according to profile #294 of “Simon & Schuster’s Guide To Insects” 1981 finally the “index” fails to evaluate the sting of the puss caterpillar, which in addition to hellish agony causes considerable tissue destruction. The bullet ant on top? Not likely.
November 3rd, 2011 at 1:03 pm
You have a mixed bag of true and false information you are giving out here…. Double check your sources and check to see if they are even reliable.