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Thistledown Velvet Ant

uncommon

Thistledown Velvet Ant

Dasymutilla gloriosa

Habitat: Sandy deserts of the American Southwest and northern Mexico
Body length: 10 mm
Order: Hymenoptera · Mutillidae

Weird but real

Its coat of long white hairs mimics the fluffy seeds of creosote bushes, letting it blow across dunes unnoticed.

Why it's cool

A wingless wasp cosplaying as plant fluff, it disguises one of nature's worst stings as harmless desert lint.

Photographs

Dasymutilla gloriosa. Thistledown Velvet Ant. Elizabeth Garcia who took this picture claimed this one creeped her out. ... and she sees a lot of wasps and bees. Not an ant, but a wasp. This it the wingeless female collected by Tim McMahon in Cochise County in Arizona. Desert. Che — USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab from Beltsville, Maryland, USA · Public domain · source

Detailaufnahme einer Ameisenwespe (Dasymutilla gloriosa) in der Sammlung des Museums für Naturkunde Berlin — Bernhard Schurian, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source