Horse Killer

Identification - Leptodialepis bipartitus.

There were clear skies and a hot sun this morning, but by the time I was set-up, the thin clouds were already appearing. The sun was continually in and out, this and the slight breeze seemed to dampen the flying bugs initial fervor.

Day seven of the cuckoo wasp hunt was not going well. I only saw one cuckoo in the hour long session. It never landed close enough for a decent shot and the one shot that I did get went straight in the bin. However, there was plenty of other action going on. The cuckoo wasp will have to wait.

Today's Blip is one of those wasps that you really don't want to mess with. They are not aggressive; in fact they are difficult to get close enough for a photograph. It is a spider hunting wasp.

Spider wasps paralyze a large spider with a most powerful sting, drag it back to a hole in the ground and seal it in with a single egg laid on its abdomen. The spider is not killed outright. The hatched grub then eats the spider from the inside, avoiding the vital organs, keeping them until last so that the spider is kept alive and the food fresh.

This type of wasp has one of the most painful stings known to man and in some countries it is known as the horse killer. I doesn't actually kill any horses, it just feels like it could.

A researcher, Justin O. Schmidt, decided to take it upon himself to create a 'pain index' for comparison. He deliberately induced wasps to sting him while he jotted down notes about how it felt. The South American tarantula hawk wasp, of the same family as today's blip, scored 4, only beaten by the bullet ant which scored 4+, what a loony!

Schmidt described the sting as, "blinding, fierce, and shockingly electric. A running hair dryer has been dropped into your bubble bath."

Dave