In case you haven't seen this before on a National Geographic special, which I haven't, here’s a tarantula hawk wasp schlepping a tarantula home, a spectacle I got to view first hand on a trip to visit my wife in Costa Rica, where she is immersed in Spanish studies for ESL certification. (Y tambien escapando al marido.) According to two guides on day trips, whom I didn’t double check even cursorily in Wikipedia (vacaciones, compadre), the wasp injects the paralyzing venom into the tarantula, drags it to a burrow, where the wasp lays an egg on the spider, and the emergent larva uses the spider as a Meal, Ready to Eat.
Yum.
This avispa was just a few steps away on the trail from disciplined lines of leaf cutter ants, which one guide called the only army in Costa Rica. I wondered afterward how many thousands of times each year that tourist joke gets recycled.
Source: Dumb Yanqui Photo
