Dasymutilla sackenii white velvet ant hifi

Dasymutilla sackenii, Sackeni's velvet ant




Dasymutilla is a genus of velvet ants that belongs to the family (Mutillidae). Contrary to what the common name, velvet ant, implies these are not ants, but rather are solitary living wasps. This is a female and as you can see, is wingless. Males possess wings, can fly, and sometimes look quite different from the female of their species.

Velvet ants in general are reputed to have fairly powerful stings. One species, D. occidentalis, is known as the cow-killer due to its powerful sting. It most likely does not really kill cows, though. They also have powerful, fanglike biting parts to their mouth. Generally speaking, they should be treated with respect and not, um, played with as i am doing here.

There are at least two of these whitish species in range of me, D. gloriosa and D. sackenii. Gloriosa seems larger and to have noticeable white hair on its legs, which this specimen seems to lack... therefore i am guessing it is D. sackenii. A third species, D. thetis, might be a possiblity, but it too seems to possess notieable white hair on its legs and so i discounted it.

The picture of the pinned insect is of the related species, D. gloriosa and was taken by Gunther Tschuch. The picture is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5.

Dasymutilla are capable of producing a squeaking sound when frightened or otherwise bothered. Dasymutilla reproduce by the female laying eggs in the burrows of other ground living wasps. Dasymutilla larva will eat the food and eventually the larva of the other wasps.

[This video has been uploaded from a 25MB MOV file]

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• Dasymutilla
• sackenii
• white
• velvet
• ant
• solitary
• wasp
• cow
• killer

[BaileysShopofScales]

@cacoseraph Yeah we have the "Cow Killer" species here in Arkansas. They are much larger, have shorter hair, and are red and black in coloration.

[cacoseraph]

@BaileysShopofScales when i was in CA (in AZ now) i saw a similar kind of dasy... i was just too scared to play/do a video of them =P

[wapogipofrog88]

Hello Caco!

Nice to see you hanging out with you fuzzy little friends.

I thought that they were bigger then that! :O

~ Habibi18 from The Scabies Forum

[cacoseraph]

hello :)

there is another species which is about twice as long named D. gloriosa that you are probably thinking abaout

thanks for watching habibi :)

[TomatoFrogs211]

interesting bug... glad to see a video from you. hopefully you will be posting more centipede videos soon?

[cacoseraph]

actually, i don't really keep centipedes at this time. i will bemoving to the ~midwest pretty soon and there are a few species i hope to catch and work with out there. they will all be little things, though. of course, i will hopefully still be going to bug group meetings and get to play with crazy stuff there :)

thanks for watching!

[bbnnkk1]

They actualy do kill cows... they actualy crawl up a grazing cows nostrils and gets startled by this and stings the inside of the cows nose causing swelling and suffocation and there's actualy documented cacases of this happenening

[BaileysShopofScales]

@cacoseraph I uploaded a couple videos of a female Dasymutilla occidentalis (Linnaeus). As I said I would. They are on my Facebook and I tagged you in both.

[BaileysShopofScales]

@cacoseraph Haha I understand, Man. They are fast! And very quick to defend themselves... The stingers on them are unreal... Their stingers are very large and they have excellent control over them. The next time I find one (I see one ever few days) I'll capture it and record a video.

[tarantulaman20]

i hate those things!!!! i picked one up and it stung me!! i thought it was a weird ant but it stung me and i remembered it was a velvet ant

[scuffle]

love her hairs. Cute and deadly, but... cow-killer lol =DD