Fuzzy bug
HI. Last October I found this fuzzy red/black bug following me. It was the weirdest thing that I’ve ever seen. I would move then make a noise and the bug would move in my direction. I’ve never seen a bug like this before. Any ideas what it is?
Thanks,
Victoria
Hi Victoria,
Lucky for you that you didn’t try to pick up that Cow Killer. Cow Killer is a local name for this species of Velvet Ant, which is in fact a flightless female wasp. Dasymutilla occidentalis gets its colorful common name because many people believe the painful sting is strong enough to kill a cow. They run quickly and are very aggressive. The males fly. They range from New York to Florida and west to Texas, but they are most common in the South.
Hello from Trinidad and Tobago
Just blogged your site for OpenDepth.com, and you should get some more viewers that way… 2 reasons for writing. You’re providing an invaluable service, and I’m going to thank you. Because of your site I was able to identify one spider (I forget it’s name) that’s called a tailless scorpion or something… Scared the hell out of me when I was cleaning the yard last year! 
Harmless, and it’s still around. You might find some of these pictures useful: you’re free to use them. Some of them I have no idea of what they are (like the ones near the carilee), but the majority look like stinkbugs – colorful. The Jack Spaniard is very common here. Your site is reaching the size where a content management system might help you – save you and users time, etc. I don’t know how savvy you folks are, but I would suggest Drupal (http://www.drupal.org ) when the next release comes out. I think your site has grown to a level where, though obviously a labor of love, it might become limiting to you and others. Drupal’s free to use and install. It’s open source. You can do it yourself if you want – and if you run into problems, there are a lot of people who can help. It doesn’t hurt to look. And it could help you get the site to pay for itself by making information easier to find. Good luck, and please keep up the good work. I just thought you might like to consider those ideas.
Taran Rampersad
Presently in: San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago
Hi Taran,
Until our current webhost, who is managing things for us, kicks us to the curb, we are going to keep the status quo, but thanks for the advice. We love your local name for your Polistes Paper Wasp. Do you know the origin of Jack Spaniard?
Speculation: Probably something along the lines of ’stings like a Spaniard’, especially in a former Spanish and then English colony. Trinidad and Tobago has quite a mix in names because of it’s mixed past. I believe that they call it the same in Guyana. Perhaps it’s a British colonial name for an insect that stings pretty aggressively.
Taran
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Posted 11 February 2005
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Hello.
I want to compliment you on a great site. Attached i sent you a pic, a little blurry sadly, of one big bug that i found near Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico. The insect was big around 10cm or between three and four inches. It could fly and the people there (the Ak tunche cave) told me it was a wasp, but I have not been able to find any information on the web. I would really appreciate your help and thanks in advance.
Pablo Kaufer
Argentina
Hi Pablo,
Your wasp is a Tarantula Hawk. The female wasp picks a fight with a tarantula, and if she wins, she stings it, paralyzes it, lays an egg on it and buries it. When the egg hatches, the young larval wasp has a nice supply of fresh meat because it eats the paralyzed tarantual alive. She will sting you painfully if you don’t respect her.
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Posted 10 February 2005
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I hope you like identifying bugs!
What I’ve got is a fascinating flying dude. It’s totally black and about 1 inch in length with buggy eyes and a triangle head. New to me is that it actually looks at me (rather in my direction) when I move. I’m too used to houseflies that fly straight back into 8-week old spiderwebs after I (yes, I have an unexplainable fettish) untangle them from the web. Anyways, my concern is that it is dangerous in some way? At first I was convinced it had some diabolical reason for being in my house (mostly since it was so black and big!) but now I’m not so sure. However, appearances CAN be deceiving. I would love an I.D. for my lil’ buddy here, and perhaps some peace of mind.
Gratefully,
Rachel B.
Hi Rachel,
You have a solitary wasp from the Sphecine Family. They are not aggressive.
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Posted 03 February 2005
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Cicada Killer and Velvet Ant
My wife and I enjoy your site. We live in Baton Rouge, LA and our garden has a diverse range of hymenopterans. This past summer we had a large emergence of cicadas and my wife took this photo of a cicada killer on our patio door. The size of these wasps is truly impressive. We also have velvet ants that hang out near one of our pecan trees (photo attached).
Regards – Mark & Malinda
Hi Mark and Malinda,
We are always happy to get good quality images of interesting subjects to add to our website. Yours is the only photo we have ever received of the Cicada Killer with its prey. Thank you so much.
Daniel
Pics of Great Black Wasp
Hello Bugman,
Our house is being invaded by these wasps, at least I think they are wasps? They are appearing inside the house about a dozen or more daily. What can we do to keep them out of the house and back outside? Is this the non-aggressive black wasp? This wasp looks like it and does not attack even when I try to swat at it when they are buzzing around me. They also like to fly into the walls and ceiling fans.
Regards,
Ruben Amesquita
SmartArt
Dallas, Texas
Hi Ruben,
I checked with an expert, Eric Eaton, who wrote back:
“Hi Ruben,
I checked with an expert, Eric Eaton, who wrote back:
“The lateral view shows it to be something in the sphecine tribe Larrini. The genera there are a real beast. You have to look at the ocelli (simple eyes) to even have a clue. They are normally fossorial (dig burrows in the soil), so I don’t know how they are getting into his house. Being solitary, though, they will not be aggressive.”
Hope that helps. Being solitary, though, they will not be aggressive.”
Hope that helps.
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Posted 27 December 2004
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wasp
Hi,
I am the operations manager at a large retreat Center and Summer Camp in Dallas Texas. We have a tall tower that the kids ride a zip line down. Every Fall these wasp swarm the tower. They are not aggressive, but needless to say, kids running and swatting at wasp 50′ in the air is not good. There are no nest, just hundreds of these wasp flying around the top of the tower. the strange thing is they are just at the top of the tower and no where else.
The attached pics are of the wasp. pic_a wasp are larger than pic_b wasp. There seems to be a equal # of both. I don’t know if they are the same species and pic_b is a juvenile. We have tried wasp spray and smoke to no avail. Any ideas???
Thanks for the Help
Ronney
Hi Ronney,
Your wasps are Paper Wasp from the genus Polistes. They inhabit meadows fields and gardens where they take nectar from flowers and they are often found near buildings. They are social wasps. Several females work together to construct an uncovered paperlike, hanging nest made of wood pulp and saliva. The Audubon Guide to Insects and Spiders goes on to say that : “One female becomes dominant queen. Ist few generations in summer are all females, cared for as larvae by unmated female workers. Unfertilized eggs produce fertile males. Only mated young queens overwinter under leaf litter and in stone walls. Old queens, workers, and larvae die. Paper Wasps are much more tolerant of people and minor disturbances than are hornets and yellow jackets.” Your species is probably Polistes apachus which occurs in Texas, New Mexico, southern California, and Mexico.
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Posted 09 November 2004
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Bug
Hello!
I found an insect living with me a couple of days ago in my California condo which is nestled against a small, grassy hill. At first, I avoided it – I am very afraid of insects, but I have no desire to harm them. Then I became more and more curious because I’ve never seen anything like it before. It looks like a fly’s torso put onto an orange, wasp-like body! It’s about 1 inch long. I overcame my fear enough to trap it and take a few photos for you. What is it?
Best regards,
Lyndie Chiou
Hi Lyndie,
The reason your Ichneumon looks like a wasp is because they are related, though Ichneumons do not sting. What looks like a stinger is in fact the ovipositor, the egg laying organ of the female Ichneumon. She uses the ovipositor to deposit eggs inside the bodies of her host insects, often caterpillars, and the young Ichneumon will eat the prey alive from the inside. Ichneumons are important in the biological control of insect pests, so they are beneficial.
Blue Wasp
Hello bugman, I took a pic of a blue wasp that was stuck in the window. Do you know what it is? I am from Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada.
Thanks
Kathy
Hi Kathy,
You have a beautiful Cuckoo Wasp, Family Chrysididae. These small wasps are usually metallic blue or green in color. They get their common name because, like the Cuckoo bird, the wasp is parasitic. According to Hogue “it lays its eggs in the nests of bees and other wasps. The larva kills the rightful occupant of the nest and develops on the provisions left in the cell by the nestbuilder.”
Update (07/29/2007) Believe you have a misidentification on a previous i.d.
Daniel: In looking for pictures of a cuckoo wasp (for which I have a nice pic I could send although you already have several), one of your identifications looks misidentified. If you look at the the pictures from Timothy and Tarik — which I believe you have identified correctly — you’ll see a generally rough looking ‘back’, and the thorax sections are not sharply separated. Also, the legs are skinny, the antennae are short, and the center of the abdomen is more bulbous than the rest. In contrast, if you look at the photo from Kathy, the back is smooth, the thorax is sharply segmented, the ‘thigh’ of the front leg is ‘muscular’ looking, the antennae are quite long, and the abdomen is fairly similar in thickness throughout its length. Not to mention that the overall color is more brilliantly blue, less green than the other photos. A check of other images on the internet shows a much closer resemblance to the blue wasp, “Aporus hirsutus”. The best example of this is found at: http://bugguide.net/node/view /31105/bgimage In particular, note the beefy upper front leg, long antennae, and other consistencies with Kathy’s image.
Oops! While I believe you still have a misidentification, another glance at the Blue Wasp photos show that this is not the correct i.d., either. I just noticed that there are two smaller photos below the larger one on the bugguide.net page, and the rear legs are cricket-like, which is clearly not the case in Kathy’s photo. I am now thinking that it at the least looks more like “Augochlorella striata” than something in the Chrysididae family. See: http://www.cedarcreek.umn.edu /insects/newslides/025066011001 apo.jpg But the smoother, more segmented back in Kathy’s photo doesn’t agree, along with the bluer color. So, I don’t think that it is any of the bugs you or I mentioned, and thus remains unidentified. Curious to hear your opinion.
Mark
Caterpillar?
Can you help me ID this caterpillar found on a trail in the mulch, in southern Ohio?
Kim
Caesar Creek Lake
Hi Kim,
Thanks for the Sawfly larvae photo with, I assume, your fingers for scale. Sawflies are not flies, but members of the Hymenoptera which includes Ants, Bees, Wasps, Ichneumons and many other families. We checked with Eric Eaton, an entomologist who believes it is one of the Cimbex species because of the large size. Cimbex americana is usually listed as our largest American sawfly, and the adult somewhat resembles a bumblebee. There are several color varieties as well. The larvae are described as yellow-green, but with the distinct black stripe down the back. Your photo could be a color variation of Cimbex americana or a closely related species. The caterpillar-like larvae feed on the leaves of a variety of trees. They can spurt a fluid when disturbed. The fullgrown larvae then crawls to the ground, where you found them, and find a place to burrow where they make a brownish cocoon to spend the winter. Thank you for adding to our site with a brand new page. We love getting new species.
I couldn’t find this one on your site.
Dear Bugman,
I would like to know what this bug is. My location is Sugar Land, Texas. The length of the two bricks total 6 inches. The 4 inch long needle like stinger is the most alarming part of the bug.
John
Hi John,
You have one of the Giant Ichneumons, Megarhyssa species. The female has a long ovipositor that she uses to lay eggs deep inside wood that is infested with wood boring grubs. They young Ichneumon feeds on the grubs. Though she is a wasp, the female Ichneumon doesn’t sting, despite the formidible looking “stinger” which is like an egg-laying syringe.
Is this a Tarantula Hawk
I have seen this Giant wasp ouside my house (In Southern Orange County) a few times now. I need to know if it is a danger to my 2 year old son as he loves to play out on our patio. I took a picture of the statue with a C sized battery so you can get an accurate size description as I tend to over exaggerate things a bit.
It sure does look like a Tarantula Hawk, but the photo is too far away to be certain. Tarantula Hawks have black bodies and reddish-orange wings. Females are not aggressive, but will sting painfully if provoked.
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Posted 10 October 2004
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