Weird Insect!!
Location: Batavia, OHIO
October 14, 2011 10:29 pm
I was a few minutes from home today and saw this bug swarming toward my windshield, and finally landed and was whipping some kind of a tail or stinger around. It stayed on the window the rest of the way home and it actually terrified me to get out because I didn’t know if it could sting. What is this bug??
Signature: Mandy H.
Dear Mandy,
We can well imagine your fears considering the appearance of the Giant Ichneumon, however, they are perfectly harmless. What appears to be a stinger is an ovipositor for laying eggs deep inside tree branches and trunks that are infested with the larvae of wood boring insects. Stingers of bees and wasps are modified ovipositors, however the ovipositor of the Giant Ichneumon has not been modified to sting.