File :-(, x, )
Anonymous
WTF is this thing?

Photographed at Crystal Cove State Park in Orange County, California during the last week of June.

Another one of these Starship Trooper insects buzzed me elsewhere on the trail. They're HUGE. The one pictured hauled this trantula for at least 12 feet before it dropped it in the bushes and went off a few feet to prepare a place to store it, eat it, I have no idea what with it, before I walked off.
>> Anonymous
thats a tarantula hawk. also known as the pepsis wasp, one of the (if not the)most painful stings in the world, comparable to the bullet ant. thank whatever god you pray to that it didnt feel like stinging you.
>> Anonymous
>>279458

Wow, I was lucky. :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantula_wasp

"...Their long legs end with hooked claws for grappling with their victims. The stinger of a female tarantula hawk can be up to 1/3 inch (7 mm) long, and delivers a sting which is rated amongst the most painful in the insect world."

This sounds like what I witnessed:

"...They capture, sting, and paralyze the spider. Next they either drag the spider back into her own burrow or transport their prey to a specially prepared nest where a single egg is laid on the spider’s body, and the entrance is covered. 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. The adult wasp emerges from the nest to continue the life cycle."

In the wikipedia article, there is a picture of a wasp digging a hole... I wondered what all those holes in the trail were from.