It Has Come Down to This! ©

My favorite bug isn't a bug at all but a wasp?

It is called a Tarantula Wasp.  I discovered this wasp on a special desert plant--the Desert Milkweed.  This plant has clusters of small yellow flowers on slender gray-green stems which grow vertically to four feet high.  The Milkweed is a choice nectar plant for numerous butterfly species.  The Milkweed has been on my list of plants for my little portion of the desert--because every year along comes the Tarantula Wasp with babies.

The tarantula wasp has a metallic blue-black body with wings that are blue-black, orangish or mahogany in color, black antennae, and is about 2 inches long.

The wasp belongs to a group of insects which has conspicuous warning colors.  This tells the potential predators (roadrunners) that it may be more painful than pleasurable!

After reading about this bug, wasp, insect I'm not sure it can be a favorite anymore.

I'm told to relocate this beautiful guy and his family because his sting is painful if he is agitated.  And to make sure windows and screens are tightly closed and sealed.  These wasps are known as cockroaches, also as sewer roaches, but are primarily found outside.  Occasionally, they enter homes but rarely are found inside.  The female hunts for a tarantula spider for food and for the larvae.  The wasp stings the spider leaving it permanently paralyzed.  She will lay an egg on the spider--the larvae will hatch attaching to the spider, and will suck the internal fluid for several months. This all happens in the tarantula's burrow.

(Copyright 2012)