Tarantula Hawks

In a post yesterday (Ants), I mentioned one of the beasties we have out here in the near-desert chapparal: the tarantula hawk. I think it's high time I introduced y'all to this little bug...

When I first saw one of these quite beautiful insects a few years ago, I was very curious as to what it might be. The photo at right (not mine!) doesn't do this insect justice at all. The body is a very bright blue, and the wings and antennae are an even brighter reddish orange color. They are bright enough to catch your eye at quite a long distance, and they're not a bit shy.

I could tell by examination that they belonged to the wasp family, and it didn't take much googling to find out what they were: members of the wasp family Pompilidae (spider wasps), in the genera Pepsis and Hemipepsis. I don't know the exact species we have here; apparently there are many species and they're difficult to tell apart. But very shortly after discovering what they are, I read this about them:

The sting, particularly of Pepsis formosa, is among the most painful of any insect. Commenting on his own experience one researcher said, "You will curse your mother for ever having you." Another described, "...immediate, excruciating pain that simply shuts down one’s ability to do anything, except, perhaps, scream. Mental discipline simply does not work in these situations." Yet another said, "It's not like things that make you swear and say bad things about somebody's mother. These things, when you get stung, you might as well lie down and scream. Why not? It takes your attention off the pain." Rightly so, it is lies almost at the top of the list in Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Although the sting is quite painful the effect is reported to last only a few minutes and is less lethal than that of the honey bee.

Now I'd never heard tell of the "Schmidt Sting Pain Index", but it didn't sound good. A quick look on Wikipedia got me this:

Schmidt Sting Pain Index or The Justin O. Schmidt Pain Index was created by Justin O. Schmidt, an entomologist. Having been stung by almost everything, Schmidt created (on his own time) an index to compare the overall pain of insect stings on a four-point scale.

* 1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
* 1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
* 1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
* 2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
* 2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine WC Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
* 3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
* 3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of Hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
* 4.0 Pepsis wasp: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath (if you get stung by one you might as well lie down and scream).
* 4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail in your heel.

Oh, boy. I'm real familiar with what it feels like to be stung by a sweat bee and a fire ant. The latter, especially, is not a lot of fun. And these bugs are very low on this scale...

That's enough to get me to be careful when I'm in the vicinity of tarantula hawks. As luck would have it, just after I discovered the pain potential in my insectly neighbors (this was a few years ago), I was outside doing some tractor work for a friend down the road from us. As I was merrily put-putting along on my Kubota, a tarantula hawk swooped around my left side, bobbled around right in front of me, and ... landed on my right arm. I know enough about the behavior of wasps to know that this thing wasn't really trying to attack me — especially if I did nothing to threaten it. But it was a little ... challenging ... to not react in this situation. In the end, though, this was quite rewarding: I stopped using my right arm to steer, brought the tractor to a halt, and had about 30 seconds of right-in-my-face observation time on this bug. And I have to tell you, it was one of the most interesting and most beautiful insects I've ever been able to see so close up. Still, I was happy when it took off, and left me alone.

A couple of years later, we spotted another tarantula hawk with a tarantula, wandering all over the side of our house trying to find a place to hide it. The tarantula hawks don't eat tarantulas (they're nectar feeders), but the females will sting and paralyze a tarantula to provide a nice cozy home for their kids:

A female wasp finds a tarantula by smell. Generally, she scampers across the ground to locate a burrow. She will enter the burrow and expel the spider, then attack it. She may also encounter a male tarantula during his search for a mate. In an attack, the wasp uses her antennae to probe the spider, which may raise its front legs and bare its fangs. (A tarantula does not always counterattack.) She then attempts to sting the spider. She might seize the spider by a leg, flip it over on its back and sting it, or she may approach from the side to deliver a sting. Once stung, the tarantula becomes paralyzed within seconds. The condition will last for the remainder of its life. The wasp may drink the body fluids oozing from the spider’s wounds or from its mouth to replenish nutrients and water she used during the attack.

Motherhood is a lovely thing, isn't it?

A couple of strange little factoids about tarantula hawks:

Tarantula hawks are the state insect of New Mexico. What on earth were they thinking?

Tarantula hawks can become "flight-challenged" after eating fermented nectar. Drunk wasps with horribly painful stings — sounds like giving a loaded gun and car keys to a drunk, angry teenager...

You can read more about tarantula hawks, pain, and insect intoxication here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Comments

After being nudged by one of my readers, I've turned comments back on — but they're moderated (by me). As some of you know, I used to have comments turned on, wide-open. The result was unacceptable to me: comment spam (lots of it!), unreasonably profanity, and uncalled-for personal attacks on me or others. Your comments certainly don't need to agree with my post — in fact, disagreement is much more interesting! You just need to post in a civilized form.

And remember, an adult (me) will be supervising. Your comments will not appear publicly until I approve them.

Condom Colonialism

George Bush has gotten very little credit in the MSM for his unprecedented USAIDS initiative. It is unprecedented in at least two ways: the sheer size of the financial commitment, and in the results it is producing. On the latter, it is particularly striking how effective the USAIDS efforts have been when compared against the vastly more expensive and longer ongoing U.N. efforts.

The U.N. has, predictably, objected strongly to the USAIDS initiative as unilateral and driven by a religious motive. The latter criticism derives from the fact that USAIDS is funding efforts to promote abstinence and faithfulness, particularly in Uganda, where the government has been very supportive. Oh, by the way — something you may not have read in the MSM — these efforts in Uganda have been stunningly effective in reducing the rate of AIDS in that country.

Mark Steyn tackles this precise issue in his new column about "condom colonialism". An excerpt:

But, after two decades, condom colonialism seems to have done nothing for southern Africa. The latest "conventional wisdom" among western do-gooders — that rapacious pharmaceutical companies should have their patents stolen in the interests of supplying cheap generic drugs to the continent — is also supported by Stephen Lewis and WHO. If condom worship is largely ineffectual, Big Pharma demonization has the potential to be utterly disastrous. Already, "pre-qualified" cheap AIDS drugs made in India have had to be "de-listed" by WHO, when they were subsequently revealed not to have met even WHO's minimal standards, by which time they were already widely circulated all around Africa. As things turned out, they weren't even cheaper--and the principal result seems likely to be not healthy Africans but Africans who develop strains of AIDS resistant to western drugs, while western pharmaceutical companies have less and less interest in developing drugs for those new strains if their patents are going to be stolen by the transnational establishment.

The Bush initiative, on the other hand, ensures African HIV sufferers will receive drugs that meet U.S. standards.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Related: It strikes me (a very non-religious guy) as kind of scary for the U.N. to take the position that promoting abstinence and faithfulness is wrong because it is (supposedly) based in religion. Scary on two counts: that the organization supposedly representing the world's people would discount the religions that so many of those people (though not me) believe in, and that the organization would dismiss the promotion of a behavior effective in reducing disease simply because the behavior corresponds with a moral standard whose parentage they believe (whether correctly or incorrectly) is religion. What the hell is the U.N. doing making judgments on such matters?

U.N. Accountability

Claudia Rosett has been investigating the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal, and investiating the investigators (the Volcker Commission). Up on the Weekly Standard this week is her latest column on the matter. An excerpt:

If Volcker's September 7 "main report" is to be the final word on U.N. management of this fiasco, then the bottom line is this: Under a program involving thousands of U.N. employees, nine U.N. agencies, and an administrative budget totaling $1.4 billion, the United Nations abetted Saddam Hussein in one of the biggest heists in history--and no one, except for a couple of third-tier U.N. officials, is being punished for it. Annan, having taken "responsibility," is still at his post. His deputy, Louise Fréchette, having directly supervised the corrupt official heading Oil-for-Food, is now in charge of U.N. reform. And the former head of Oil-for-Food, Benon Sevan, accused by Volcker of taking at least $147,000 in bribes from Saddam, has been allowed to cash in his U.N. pension and leave the country.

She summarizes very nicely what has been frustrating to me: the complete lack of accountability at the U.N. Combine that with it's complete lack of effectiveness and relevance, and I can't help but join the (growing) group of people who are wondering why in the heck we have a U.N. at all — and most especially why do we have a U.N. that is (a) largely financed by the U.S. taxpayer, and (b) headquartered on American soil.

What's the point, exactly? Someone please let me know...

Barone's Patterns

Michael Barone has a typically excellent column up on RealClearPolitics. Any excerpt:

A world spinning out of control: That is what the old-line broadcast networks seem to be showing us. But I see other patterns. George W. Bush has consistently asserted that one reason for removing Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was to advance freedom and democracy in the Middle East. In spite of the improvised explosive devices, that seems to be happening. Lebanon's Cedar Revolution was as inspiring an example of people power as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Libya has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction. Egypt, by far the largest Arab nation, had its first contested election this month, and, as the Washington Post's David Ignatius writes from Cairo, "the power of the reform movement in the Arab world today ... is potent because it's coming from the Arab societies themselves and not just from democracy enthusiasts in Washington." Which is evidence that Bush was right: Muslims and Arabs, like people everywhere, want liberty and self-rule. Afghanistan has just voted, and Iraq is about to vote a second time this year. Violence continues, but the more important story is that democracy and freedom are advancing.

If you're not familiar with Michael "The Political Encyclopedia" Barone, I'd encourage you to rectify that. He's one of the most well-informed (in the sense of knowing history and political minutiae) voices out there...