Velvet Ant — printable fact sheet
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Velvet Ant
Dasymutilla occidentalis
Velvet ants (family Mutillidae) are not ants at all. They are wasps, and the furry, brilliantly coloured animal running across the sand is a wingless female; the males have wings, look like ordinary wasps, and cannot sting. The females' sting is legendary. The eastern species Da…
Did you know?
- Velvet ants can produce a squeaking sound by rubbing body segments together, a behavior known as stridulation.
- Every velvet ant you see running on the ground is a wingless female wasp; the winged males cannot sting at all. Its exoskeleton is so hard that it takes about eleven times more force to crush than a honeybee's. Dozens of unrelated velvet ant species across the American southwest have converged on the same colour patterns, forming some of the largest mimicry rings known in any animal. The sting hurts enormously but its venom is comparatively weak, since terror rather than toxicity is the whole strategy.
What I learned
Draw the velvet ant
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