Tarantula Hawk’s in the Shadows.

Since I started taking Meet Your Neighbour images down here in the tropics I’ve wanted to photograph a Tarantula Hawk Wasp species. Well the other night I finally got my wish. After last years many failed attempts at catching one, they can be very good at outsmarting a particular human species with a net or bag. And there’s also this pesky thing in the back of my mind called the Schmidt sting pain index, Justin O. Schmidt rated the level of pain that can be inflected by certain species of ants, bees and wasps. Some species of Tarantula Hawk Wasps topped the scale with the aptly named Bullet Ant. So it’s always a little bit of a daunting task of catching one of these species. They’re just an amazing species to watch in action, a few times I’ve seen them actually take down prey. They have this robotic feeling to them, it’s just like a mechanical death machine. They twitch back and forth quickly while using their beautiful orange antennae probing around the forest floor for their next victim. I was finally able to capture one that came to a moth light we had set up. While it was distracted with the white sheet, I was able to get a container over him. To say it looked angry in the container is an understatement, it was looking at every knock and cranny of the small circular container for a way out. I was able to get a few MYN photos before he became wise to my trickery and flew out from under the container when I was being a little to cavalier with the distance I could uncover him.  Never the less I was happy, but during the whole experience it had me reminiscing about another story from a few years ago.

Tarantula Hawk Wasp (Pepsis sp.)

In a thousand hectare patch of Panamanian forest bordering the territory of the Kuna Yala Indians sits the main base cap for Cocobolo Nature reserve. A few years ago I was setting out for a night hike to collect Herpetological specimens; the party of people included Joel the intrepid navigator slash jack-of-all-trades, Emilio a Panamanian botanist /tropical field ecologist, two high school students going out into the rainforest for the first time at night, and myself. For the first forty minutes or so the hike traversing through the preserve was going swimmingly. We had seen a few nice things including a Bolitoglossa cuna small salamander species; any neo-tropical salamander is a welcome sight.

Bolitoglossa cuna

Than a question arose from one of the students, what was this large insect that kept colliding with him and trying to go towards his headlamp. I was in the back of the line of people trying to collect anything that was missed, so I had to move through some vegetation to take a gander at what it could be. I immediately saw fast movement with just flashes of orange color streaking in front of him. I remember thinking to myself “oh boy this is going to be fun to explain”.  I tried to explain in a calm and confident manner that it was a Tarantula Hawk Wasp and to keep calm and not swat at it. That’s exactly what happened, yeah right, swift and furious swipes like a bear going for honey where what entailed from the next scene. I quickly got him to calm down, while the Wasp than moved onto the next student. We quickly started to move fast along the trail hoping the Wasp would leave, not happening, it just kept rotating between us. Joel decided we would cut off the trail into a small stream where we would hopefully loose it. Again this was to no avail. So I decided to make the decision lets turn off all of our lights and just stand still for a second, hopefully it would see the light from the moon and move in that direction. I don’t know if I had ever been in the rainforest without a light before, but wow, it was dark. I couldn’t see my fingers directly in front of my eye, and with the luck of the situation there was no moon. I decided to hold fast in the decision and give it a couple of minutes of no lights. We turn them on, and like a Salmon rushing up stream; the Wasp shot out from the vegetation and was again on my light.  I had finally had enough of panicked students, and the nagging thought of what might happen if one of them got stung, that I decided to make an executive decision. I told Joel to keep going on the trail with just his light and I would stay behind with the wasp and my light. Emilio seemed to like this plan, since he gave a very enthusiastic lets get out of here Joel.  So they went up the path for a little while, I waited till they were just far enough where I could still see them, but thought If I turned my light out the wasp might not. I finally cupped my hand, took my headlamp off and waited till the wasp was flying around it. With a quick motion I cupped, tossed the wasp, and turned my light off. Waited a second or two, than walked quickly down the path till I was with the rest of the party. It actually worked; we were left alone the rest of the hike. It wasn’t maybe the smartest decision, but it was better than one of the students getting stung, because as I’m writing thinking man that wasn’t your best move to date, I’m remembering one of the students was allergic to wasp’s. I’m going to go with that as my rational factor.

Tarantula Hawk Wasp (Pepsis sp.)