We've seen some pretty cool stuff while we have been here. We've traveled to the Amazon and seen monkeys and caimans. We've been to the coast and seen weird fish and sea lions and boobies. We've even seen unique animals in the mountains where we live (I'm looking at you Llama who I fought). However this week I saw something I've never even heard of before...a tarantula wasp.
I was looking for a student during our lunch hour to talk to him and came across a colleague who had lunch supervision duty. We got to chatting and out of the corner of our eyes we saw a blackish mass about the size of a cell phone moving. We went up to look at it and to our horror we saw animal murder taking place.
My friend Nick said, "Oh I read a cool article about these. They are giant wasps that are natural enemies of tarantulas. They sting them to paralyze them, drag them to their wasp dungeon, and lay eggs on them so their baby can eat the paralyzed tarantula alive."
I'll wait. I understand you may need a moment to process that sentence.
....
Ok, ready?
That is the most disturbing thing I think I have heard of but I witnessed it first hand. Also, of course we called over all of the middle school boys and girls to gawk at it. This was before we knew that it had the second most painful venom sting of any animal in the world. Oh well it all worked out alright.
Check out the article Nick was referring to: Article
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