# Tarantula Hawk



## Ranitomeya (Jul 13, 2015)

Went out collecting in a canyon and there were dozens of tarantula hawks flying about. I caught a few and here's a male lapping up some sugar solution from a q-tip.
The largest female I captured is about twice his length and more than twice his mass. Each one of these beauties represents a battle fought and won by female tarantula hawk against a tarantula or some other very large spider.

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## Hisserdude (Jul 13, 2015)

Wow, pretty! I would never be able to hold one of those though! :laugh:


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## Ranitomeya (Jul 14, 2015)

I'd definitely avoid handling a female since they're capable of stinging even if they're usually reluctant to do so without provocation, but male hymenoptera have no stingers since stingers are modified ovipositors. It's quite safe to handle male wasps.
The large females have very long and sharp stingers that would be able to go quite deep. They're long enough that they'd go through your finger were they capable of going through nail and bone.

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## BobGrill (Jul 14, 2015)

Ranitomeya said:


> I'd definitely avoid handling a female since they're capable of stinging even if they're usually reluctant to do so without provocation, but male hymenoptera have no stingers since stingers are modified ovipositors. It's quite safe to handle male wasps.
> The large females have very long and sharp stingers that would be able to go quite deep. They're long enough that they'd go through your finger were they capable of going through nail and bone.


Don't they have one of the most painful stings of any insect on the planet? 

Sent from my LG-D801 using Tapatalk


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## pannaking22 (Jul 14, 2015)

Out of curiosity, how were you able to sex these guys?


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## Hisserdude (Jul 14, 2015)

Wow, I never knew males had no sting! Thanks for that information!


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## Smokehound714 (Jul 14, 2015)

looks like Pepsis pallidolimbata


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## edgeofthefreak (Jul 14, 2015)

You gonna breed them?


...wait, on second thought...

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## Ranitomeya (Jul 15, 2015)

Tarantula hawks are said to have one of the most painful stings, but I've never experienced it. I believe it's supposed to be intense, but brief compared to the dull, but long-lasting sting of a honeybee.

They're quite easy to sex when they're at rest and aren't extending their antennae out in search of things. The females have thinner antennae that curl back and the males have thicker antennae that are held straight out.
You can see the male below with four females of varying size. There are both Hemipepsis and Pepsis species around and I haven't gone through the trouble of trying to identify whether the smaller females are Hemipepsis or just small females that were provisioned with juvenile tarantulas.


It'd be neat to see the complete life cycle of these, but it would unfortunately require that I sacrifice a tarantula. It's a little early for wandering native males and my pet tarantulas are off limits! :tongue:

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## pannaking22 (Jul 15, 2015)

Cool, thanks for the info!


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## Ranitomeya (Jul 28, 2015)

I handled the female and fed her since she wasn't behaving defensively like she normally would.

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## Ranitomeya (Aug 2, 2015)

Teased up a tarantula while on a hike, brought it home, and set the open vial with the tarantula in front of the largest tarantula hawk.

She immediately went at it and was grabbed by the tarantula. It was pretty surprising how aggressively the tarantula reacted to the tarantula hawk. It was quite docile when I teased it out of its burrow and put it into the vial during my hike.
Very loud crunching sounds could be heard as it began chewing on the her, but being grabbed by the tarantula seemed to put her right where she wanted to be because it collapsed, pooped itself, and became a limp pile of twitching legs a second later.
She came out from under the tarantula apparently unscathed and groomed herself for a moment before lapping up fluids from the tarantula's mouth.

I gave her a container of moist sand and she excavated a burrow before dragging the paralyzed tarantula into it, laying a single egg, and filling the burrow until there was just a chamber with the tarantula.
Here's the paralyzed tarantula with the egg after I dug it out of the burrow.

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## MrCrackerpants (Aug 2, 2015)

Thanks for sharing!


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## Hisserdude (Aug 3, 2015)

Wow, hope you can successfully rear the larva to adulthood!  Poor tarantula though.

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## Cavedweller (Aug 3, 2015)

This is amazing! I never would have had the heart to sacrifice a tarantula to a pepsis wasp, but you (and that poor tarantula)are doing an invaluable service to the field of entomology. Man that egg is huge. I always assumed tarantula hawks only laid a few eggs due to the enormous investment they have to put in each one.

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## edgeofthefreak (Aug 4, 2015)

Cavedweller said:


> This is amazing! I never would have had the heart to sacrifice a tarantula to a pepsis wasp, but you (and that poor tarantula)are doing an invaluable service to the field of entomology. Man that egg is huge. I always assumed tarantula hawks only laid a few eggs due to the enormous investment they have to put in each one.


That's what makes this so intriguing!! All that effort for just one egg. Though, Rani either got a pepsis wasp from The Matrix, or they can all get full on attacked, and survive simply by cleaning themselves after.

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## Ranitomeya (Aug 4, 2015)

I saw a number of tarantula hawks where I was hiking, so despite the few tarantula burrows I was able to find in the easily accessible areas, I'm sure there's a healthy population of tarantulas in the area where I couldn't access.
My friends and I had caught about a dozen female tarantula hawks, so I'm weighing this one sacrifice against the many tarantulas each of those females would have captured.

The tarantula hawks I pinned had really smooth and tough, yet flexible exoskeletons. I'm sure that's how the females are able to handle getting attacked by a tarantula.
I've kept Bombus vosnesenskii before and I'd say the egg is about 50% bigger than a bumblebee egg. Hopefully it hatches and I can watch the larva develop.

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## Ranitomeya (Aug 6, 2015)

The egg hatched five days after it was laid at around room temperature. Here's the little grub slowly sucking the life out of the paralyzed tarantula.

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## MrCrackerpants (Aug 6, 2015)

Thanks! I am hoping you will continue to update this thread as the larva develops.


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## The Snark (Aug 6, 2015)

There's two things here I find surprising.
First, the hawk taking the beating from the spider. But this demonstrates one animals general abilities, combining self defense and prey capture for food vs an animal that has it's entire 'focus', the survival of it's species, evolved into successful combat in that situation. IE if the T stood a reasonable chance of fighting off the hawk that species of wasp would probably be extinct by now.

The other thing is this very short time frame. 5 days from take down to maturing larvae. Again, highly specialized evolvement. I suspect if the time frame was much greater that larvae would be getting nothing but hyperactive bacteria dinners.

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## Ranitomeya (Aug 6, 2015)

Bumblebee eggs tend to take about four to five days to hatch, so I'm not surprised by how quickly the tarantula hawk egg hatched. The difference is that a bumblebee queen has to thermoregulate and keep the eggs warm at around 30 degrees Celsius to develop properly and hatch within that time frame, but a tarantula hawk egg receives no additional care after being provisioned and sealed in an underground chamber.

I do not know how quickly the larva develops, but I assume it will develop quickly enough that the host would not die from any wounds and decay before it were able to get the most of its meal. The female tarantula hawk only paralyzes the tarantula with its venom and it's supposed to remain a living source of nourishment for the larva. From what information I've been able to find in literature, the larva is thought to avoid feeding on any of the tarantula's essential organs and keeps it alive as long as possible until it has reached the size where it can kill and consume the tarantula before the remains decompose. The tarantula can still slowly move its limbs in response to being touched, but it's like a reflex with no coordination.


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## The Snark (Aug 6, 2015)

Ranitomeya said:


> Bumblebee eggs tend to take about four to five days to hatch, so I'm not surprised by how quickly the tarantula hawk egg hatched. The difference is that a bumblebee queen has to thermoregulate and keep the eggs warm at around 30 degrees Celsius to develop properly and hatch within that time frame, but a tarantula hawk egg receives no additional care after being provisioned and sealed in an underground chamber.
> 
> I do not know how quickly the larva develops, but I assume it will develop quickly enough that the host would not die from any wounds and decay before it were able to get the most of its meal. The female tarantula hawk only paralyzes the tarantula with its venom and it's supposed to remain a living source of nourishment for the larva. From what information I've been able to find in literature, the larva is thought to avoid feeding on any of the tarantula's essential organs and keeps it alive as long as possible until it has reached the size where it can kill and consume the tarantula before the remains decompose. The tarantula can still slowly move its limbs in response to being touched, but it's like a reflex with no coordination.


That is remarkably sophisticated. The entire immune system of an animal relies upon the central nervous system for a myriad of functions. Somehow the venom suppresses the central nervous system but leaves enough of the correct functions intact to resist bacterial growth. Compare to the average dead animal that starts to rot within hours.


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## Chris11 (Aug 6, 2015)

I am following this because its awesome! A little sad about the T, but its nature and would have happened regardless.


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## Smokehound714 (Aug 8, 2015)

you could probably rear some fast-growing tarantulas like Lasiodora and get them to the size of eutylenum and use them to farm Pepsis

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## Ranitomeya (Aug 9, 2015)

It would be an interesting experiment to see whether or not native tarantula hawks are able to use exotic species. I wonder if exotic tarantulas would result in the same behavior or if they might be ignored because they're specialists on the native tarantula species. It would also be interesting to see whether or not the venom works the same way on other species.

The adult size of tarantula hawks is dependent on the size of the tarantula they're provisioned with, so maybe providing them with a much larger, better-fed tarantula might result in an adult size equal to that of the larger tarantula hawks that can be found in South America.

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## Smokehound714 (Aug 10, 2015)

Ranitomeya said:


> It would be an interesting experiment to see whether or not native tarantula hawks are able to use exotic species. I wonder if exotic tarantulas would result in the same behavior or if they might be ignored because they're specialists on the native tarantula species. It would also be interesting to see whether or not the venom works the same way on other species.
> 
> The adult size of tarantula hawks is dependent on the size of the tarantula they're provisioned with, so maybe providing them with a much larger, better-fed tarantula might result in an adult size equal to that of the larger tarantula hawks that can be found in South America.


There are a few large socal species that exceed 50mm in body length.  Mildei and grossa are two such species, though grossa is more common in the sonoran desert.


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## Ranitomeya (Aug 11, 2015)

The larva unfortunately didn't make it. For some reason it started oozing liquid before turning brown and dying. The tarantula hawk females I had left weren't very young and died of old age, so I'm unfortunately unable to try and see if it would lay another egg on the paralyzed tarantula..

I'll try to catch some more tarantula hawks in a couple weeks and hopefully the poor tarantula doesn't go to waste.

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## Smokehound714 (Aug 19, 2015)

Damn, that sucks..


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## Ranitomeya (Aug 31, 2015)

I went back to the canyon today and caught a couple of small tarantula hawks and a couple large ones. I wasn't able to catch as many as I was hoping and I did not see nearly as many as my last trip. The milkweeds were out of bloom and there weren't many flowers to tempt them to stop while flying through the canyon.

One of the larger ones is most likely an old Pepsis thisbe, the same species as the ones previously collected, but I can't be 100% sure since the first sign of aging on them is fraying and loss of the edges of their wings. The other large female has orange antennae, so is most likely Pepsis mildei.

Interesting note: The Pepsis thisbe female appeared to be dead or was just about dead when I got into the car to leave the canyon, most likely due to it struggling within the vial and then clogging its spiracles with fluids released during the struggle. She wasn't rigid in the way even recently dead tarantula hawks tend to be, so I grabbed a pair of forceps and compressed and decompressed its abdomen manually while removing fluids that leaked out of the sides of its abdomen with a paper towel. After a few minutes it began to twitch and was able to breathe on its own and it's now alive, moving normally, and feeding on sugar solution.

The tarantula was beginning to regain mobility and the paralysis seems to be wearing off. I wonder if tarantulas could recover completely after being stung if the larvae did not consume them.

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## Malhavoc's (Aug 31, 2015)

I recall somewhere someone nursing one back from the sting, if I recall it made a slow but full recovery, Try searching the tarantula forum, but it may be a few years old, I have been lurking for some time on and off! ha! I also wonder about the death of the larvae, I would dare say it requires certain humidity to mature without ill that would be found in the sealed chamber, How were you keeping it? was it dry, wet, etc?


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## Ranitomeya (Aug 31, 2015)

The tarantula and egg was kept in a large vial lined with a damp piece of paper towel with a single small hole poked into the lid.

It appears I won't be making an attempt with the Pepsis mildei as it escaped and flew outside through a crack between the ground and the screen door...
I'll see if the other female is able to utilize the tarantula. If not, I'll see if I can keep the tarantula alive long enough for it to recover.


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## Malhavoc's (Sep 1, 2015)

Ranitomeya said:


> The tarantula and egg was kept in a large vial lined with a damp piece of paper towel with a single small hole poked into the lid.
> 
> It appears I won't be making an attempt with the Pepsis mildei as it escaped and flew outside through a crack between the ground and the screen door...
> I'll see if the other female is able to utilize the tarantula. If not, I'll see if I can keep the tarantula alive long enough for it to recover.


Interesting, Keep us posted On the outcome or the recovery of the T, if the T is set to recover, my suggestion is making some form of cricket juice, to drip in its mouth parts to see if it can eat. or at least 'absorb' some nutrition.


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