Ben Caruthers was able to photograph this wasp and identify it as the Elegant Tarantula Hawk, Pepsis menechma. Ben reports:
"I have seen these flying through my yard all summer. They are very wary and difficult to photograph. I had to use my 600mm zoom to capture this one. Those yellow antennae are really eye-catching. I usually spook them from their hunting spot on the ground. I saw this one land and went to grab my camera. It hunts on the ground through the grass. It moves quickly and I never got to see it catch anything."
Like Spiderman, spider wasps have special powers. They are able to track down and catch spiders including some like wolf spiders that are larger than they are. They paralyze the spider and haul it off to a nest which they have appropriated from another animal. There they leave it as food for their young. The adults stick to nectar for fuel, drinking Kool Aid while the kids eat.....Yuck! You can see all this action in this video.
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| E. fulvicornis - Wikimedia |
Discover Nature also discusses the spider wasp family, Pompilidae. They mention identifying features found by stretching the hind leg out, something that sounds dangerous to me. I will stick with photographs and live observation.
"The extra long, spiny hind legs that often dangle downward in flight, and the nervous flicking of the wings are helpful characters for identification at a glance. The spider-hunting behavior, often on the ground, is another strong clue."
There are over 5,000 species of spider wasps world wide. The Godzilla of them all is the tarantula hawk which we discussed in this 2013 blog. Schmidt in his now famous pain scale ranked it with the gusto of a food critic as the second worst sting. We don't have any data on Ben's spider wasp and anxiously await his report on picking one up.
