The unknown Insect

I found this rather evil looking insect in the workshop, when I opened the door this morning. I had no idea what it was and considered it harmless, in fact I chased it on to my open hand and then searched for a container, to confine it while I sorted myself out. I get quite a few of these in the house. They do fly, but prefer to walk around. To be totally honest, I thought it was some kind of hopper, given its prominent hind legs and its ability to jump, hence the harmless assumption.

Once I had my camera set up, I released it from the plastic prison and proceeded to follow it around the house, snapping away, until I was confident that I must have something worth blipping. I used manual focus and flash as usual with my small subjects. I fitted a tissue boot to the pop-up flash, to remove some of the sting out of the lighting.

When I loaded the photographs onto the computer and pulled this one up in slideshow mode, I was horrified to discover that this harmless hopper was actually my all time pet hate, a wasp! I nearly threw up at the thought of having had it on my bare hand. Wasps should be colored black and yellow, so that we know what we are dealing with, why does Indonesian nature always break the rules.

The thing that really creeps me out about wasps, is the separation of the abdomen. This allows the wasp to manipulate its weapon in any direction that it chooses, to inflict its damage. Just look at the separation on this little beasties abdomen, absolutely disgusting and to think I have spent the last ten minutes within six inches of it. What is interesting is that the abdomen connection is at the top, whereas it is usually at the bottom. This one attacks by bringing its stinger over its head, whereas a normal wasp attacks from underneath. Well, it is now an ex-wasp, curled up in an agonizing posture on my window sill, having received a generous coating of spray.

This country has some monster wasps. One that I particularly hate, is jet black, over an inch long, with huge abdomen separation and a wing span of about one and a half inches and sounds like a Lancaster bomber in the distance. Another, of similar size, less separation, the tip of the abdomen is bright orange. It looks so evil. It has excellent eye sight too. I approached one as it rested on a wall, as I moved around, it moved its body position, I moved again and the wasp moved with me. It totally freaked me out. I would love to blip each of the above to share with you, but I just lack the sphericals to get close enough.

I should add that this particular specimen of evil blipped above, is about 3/8" in body length, quite small on the scale of wasps. Like I mentioned yesterday, you don't really 'see' the insect until you have photographed it. The wasp was actually cleaning its wings at the moment of capture. This concludes day 4 of my accidental blip series, who knows what tomorrow will inflict on me.

Dave

Postscript: I found it on the internet, it is called the ensign wasp. Harmless to humans, it lays a single egg in a cockroach egg case. The grub consumes the eggs and morphs into a wasp, before escaping to a life of three weeks, during which time it will destroy more roaches before they happen.

So sorry that I killed this one and promise I won't do it again.

Dave