A truly macabre lifecycle

As beautiful , breathtaking and inspirational as mother nature can be she also hides some truly disturbing and even macabre stories as well. One almost seems to be right out of a horror movie.

Enter the Tarantula Wasp aka. Hawk wasp aka . Tarantula Hawk wasp.. besides its macabre lifecycle it also packs the second most painful sting in the insect world. Although I think some may argue the insect part because of its size with 2-2 1/2 " abdomen .

The female Tarantula Hawk needing a place to lay her eggs goes hunting. She searches on the ground until she finds a tarantula in its underground den. She goes in after it and with a few stings the tarantula is paralyzed , not dead just paralyzed. She drags the tarantula back to her own burrow makes a hole in the spiders abdomen and lays a single egg. She then seals up her burrow and leaves.

The wasp larva will hatch in 3-4 days. And then it starts to consume its host ( the paralyzed tarantula ) from the inside being careful not to eat any vital organs. . It continues to grow and eat the tarantula alive for about 3 weeks. Then when it gets to it's final instar or stage of development another 15-20 days then and only then will it consume and eat the heart and nervous system of the spider thus killing it.

They believe one female tarantula wasp will capture 13-14 tarantulas in its lifecycle which is 4-5 months. The males only live a few weeks. But at least the have it better than male black widow spiders. As soon as they are done breeding the female black widow kills and eats the male. Ahh the wonders of nature. Being eaten from the inside out while still alive for over a month is a bit macabre to me. A crazy, strange and interesting life cycle to say the least. And there are actually 15 subspecies of tarantula wasps here in the southwestern USA.