Subject:Â Beautiful and big Ant
Geographic location of the bug:Â Caracas, Venezuela
Date: 08/01/2019
Time: 05:50 PM EDT
Your letter to the bugman:Â I foud the ant at my yard this morning. It`s the second one I see in a year. it`s about 3 cmts. long.
How you want your letter signed:Â Arturo
Dear Arturo,
We feel quite certain that this is a Velvet Ant, a flightless female Wasp in the family Mutillidae. We just hope we can find an image on the internet to confirm our identification. BINGO. Here is an image on Steemit, but alas, it is not identified to the species. This image on FlickR is identified as being in the genus Hoplomutilla. Instazu has many images. Velvet Ants are reported to have a very painful sting. One species of Velvet Ant from North America is commonly called a Cow Killer though we don’t know of any actual documentation of a cow dying from the sting of a Cow Killer.