Nature
Texas Wasp Gains Notoriety for Its Vicious Sting
A video posted by LemonCurd on YouTube is quickly gaining views across the internet due to its fascinating, yet disturbing, look at a tarantula and a tarantula hawk wasp battle. The two insects tumble until the wasp is able to paralyze the tarantula with its awful sting. Lately, the tarantula hawk insect has gained notoriety online with another popular video posted by Adventures With Cash featuring a bug-savvy kid explaining to his parents what was going on as they watched a similar battle.
With knowledge of the wasp spreading, Deseret News writes that people (especially those who live in the Texas to Utah region) are becoming increasingly concerned about being on the receiving end of one of their stings. And according to Ben Hutchins of Texas Parks and Wildlife, the pain of their sting is terrible.
“There are some vivid descriptions of people getting stung by these things,” Hutchins stated, “and their recommendation — and this was actually in a peer-reviewed journal — was to just lie down and start screaming, because few, if any, people could maintain verbal and physical coordination after getting stung by one of these things. You’re likely to just run off and hurt yourself. So just lie down and start yelling.”
But thankfully, tarantula hawks really don’t want to sting you. Scientists say you really have to be bothering them in order to get stung. If you want to learn more about their vicious stings, of course, Coyote Peterson of Strange Wilderness was purposefully stung by one in a video you can see below.
