A Tarantula Hawk Encounter

This is not one of my super facts posts but I think it is interesting information about a quite frightening insect that I had never heard of before I encountered it- a tarantula hawk encounter.

When my daughter was 5-7 years old, she was part of what you can perhaps call a pre-girl-scout organization. It was called Indian Princesses. It later changed its name to Adventure Princesses. They had meetings where they learned things, and they went camping as a group with their dads or moms. There were bonfires, grilling, nature, fishing, adventures, jumping in mud, riding horses, and staying up late at night.

My daughter Rachel camping at Camp Classen in Oklahoma. We are standing around a bonfire at night.

One time the Indian Princesses went camping in Camp Classen in Oklahoma. Since we live in North Texas it was not far away. One morning, as we were standing there talking and preparing breakfast, we saw a big black insect landing on the ground.

As we looked closer, we saw that it had landed on a Tarantula. It stung the tarantula, which stopped moving. Then it dragged the Tarantula through the grass about 100-150 feet and then under the girls’ bathroom. As we stood around the Tarantula and the big black insect, we saw that the insect had reddish wings and the body shape of a wasp or an ant. We did not know what it was. This was the year 2005 or possibly 2006 and cellphones with internet were not common.

This is a photo of the Tarantula Hawk that we saw. It is dragging a Tarantula that it had just stung. It is our photo and maybe not a great photo.

My daughter ran to get her jewelry box from her cabin. When she came back, she handed it to me and said, “Dad put them in here”. Another dad standing nearby started laughing and said, “yes Thomas I want to see you put them in the box.” It was quite lucky that I didn’t because the big black insect with reddish wings was what is called a Tarantula Hawk, a type of wasp, which allegedly has the most painful sting of any insect in the northern hemisphere. There is an insect with a worse sting in South America.

A Tarantula Hawk Wasp feeding on some flowers. Stock Photo ID: 2018945009 by Rix Pix Photography

The Tarantula Hawk is a wasp that feeds on nectar but the female Tarantula Hawk stings and kills Tarantulas to feed its larvae.  It stings the Tarantula between the legs, paralyzing it, and then drags the prey to a specially prepared burrow, where a single egg is laid on the spider’s abdomen, and the burrow entrance is covered.

According to this article one researcher described the tarantula hawk’s sting this way: “To me, the pain is like an electric wand that hits you, inducing an immediate, excruciating pain that simply shuts down one’s ability to do anything, except, perhaps, scream.

Below is a youTube video about the Tarantula Hawk.

Have you ever encountered a Tarantula Hawk or another scary wasp or insect?

To see the Super Facts click here

Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

25 thoughts on “A Tarantula Hawk Encounter”

  1. That sounds like a horror movie rather than reality. I’ve never heard of it and hope to never see it. There must also be a lot of tarantulas in that area to satisfy all of the female tarantula hawks.
    When we were in the Bolivian jungle, someone we were with was stung/bit by a bullet ant which is supposedly the most painful bite in the world. Maggie

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    1. Ouch! That must have been horrible. Yes, Bullet Ant was the other insect they were referring to (in online science magazines and Wikipedia). I read somewhere that the name for the Bullet Ant comes from that it felt like being shot. I am certainly glad I did not try to put them in my daughter’s Jewelry box.

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    1. Yes after finding out what it was after we got home I vertainly was glad I did not put them in my daughter’s jewelry box. It was Indian Princesses the first two years she was part of and then the name changed to Adventure Princesses but she was pretty much moving on at that point. I don’t know why they changed the name.

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  3. I’d never heard of Adventure Princesses till I read this blog post! I knew, for instance, about Brownies, the Girl Scouts’ equivalent to Cub Scouts. I was a Cub Scout when I was a boy, and my girlfriend at the time was a Brownie…this was in the early to mid-1970s.

    Gosh. Now I feel old. 🙂

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    1. Like you my middle child / younger son was in the cub scubs but he did not continue to the scouts. I believe Indian/Adventure Princesses was the step before Brownies 5-7 years old. I was part of a scout like organization back in Sweden when I was young but it was called something different first J1 and then J2.

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  4. Hi Thomas, this is very interesting. I have seen this happen with our local Pompilid wasps which stings our rain spiders and drags them off to become food for its egg with it hatches. The sting causes paralysis. Nature is fascinating and cruel in a way as everything has a purpose in the cycle of life.

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    1. Yes I read that they are called spider wasps, the entire family (Pompilid), and Tarantula Hawk and the one you mentioned are species. Yes nature is fascinating but I can’t help feeling sorry for the poor spiders.

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    1. Neither had I until we encountered it. Low and behold, after I encountered it and I started paying attention to it, I found one in our house a few years later. I sprayed the heck out of it. I think it I sprayed about a pound of insect spray on it. If you live anywhere in the south-west you’ll have them.

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    1. Yes I agree. It looks mean. It isn’t very aggressive but if it does sting you then it is truly terrible. I am glad you have never seen one but I’ll bet they are common where you live. They like dry climates and I’ve seen them twice without living in a dry climate (well compared to you).

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    2. From a distance you may mistake them for a large black beetle and when you get closer you’ll see the big wasp/ant body type. The first time I saw a Tarantula Hawk at Camp Classen, it looked like a big black beetle to me until I got closer. My second thought was that it was some sort of 2-3 inch long giant ant, and then someone said it must be some sort of wasp, but none of us knew what it was until we got home.

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