Dasymutilla sackenii, Sackeni's velvet ant

[cacoseraph]

Dasymutilla sackenii, Sackeni's velvet ant





Dasymutilla is a genus of velvet ants that belongs to the family (Mutillidae). Contrary to what the common name, velvet ant, implies these are not ants, but rather are solitary living wasps. This is a female and as you can see, is wingless. Males possess wings, can fly, and sometimes look quite different from the female of their species.

Velvet ants in general are reputed to have fairly powerful stings. One species, D. occidentalis, is known as the cow-killer due to its powerful sting. It most likely does not really kill cows, though. They also have powerful, fanglike biting parts to their mouth. Generally speaking, they should be treated with respect and not, um, played with as i am doing here.

There are at least two of these whitish species in range of me, D. gloriosa and D. sackenii. Gloriosa seems larger and to have noticeable white hair on its legs, which this specimen seems to lack... therefore i am guessing it is D. sackenii. A third species, D. thetis, might be a possiblity, but it too seems to possess notieable white hair on its legs and so i discounted it.

The picture of the pinned insect is of the related species, D. gloriosa and was taken by Gunther Tschuch. The picture is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5.

Dasymutilla are capable of producing a squeaking sound when frightened or otherwise bothered. Dasymutilla reproduce by the female laying eggs in the burrows of other ground living wasps. Dasymutilla larva will eat the food and eventually the larva of the other wasps.

[This video has been uploaded from a 25/10MB MOV file]

Dasymutilla sackenii white velvet ant solitary wasp cow killer


HIFI (from 25MB MOV):


LOFI (from 10MB MOV)

[zonbonzovi]

Cool find. Fun captives if you have space to watch them explore.

[cacoseraph]

i kept what i thought was a D. occidentalis before. she ate honey, sugar water, and maybe either ate or just kinda licked some fruit. she lasted a decent amount of time, like ~4 months, iirc... pretty cool little bug. and she was definitely one of my more ~fierce captives

[Moltar]

Velvet ants are cool little suckers, eh? My father has D. occidentalis (i think) all over his place. He also has these large, solitary, flying wasps we call "apple wasps" and i think they are the host for the parasitic stage of the D. occidentalis.

I caught one once and tried to keep it in a jar with little success. It ignored the 1/2 grape and watery honey I offered it, tried constantly to escape and died in about 3 weeks. i felt bad about that... Mytheory is that she had mated already and wanted only to find a burrow to lay her eggs in, hence ignoring the food.

Pics:

[cacoseraph]

i kept what i think was an occy and it did as ok as one can expect. it ate/drank sugar water and honey and either licked or ate a bit of smooshed fruit, too

but, it did die after ~3 months, iirc. they are not super great pets, imo, cuz you can't breed them. (or at least not easily... danged tricky parasites)



etown, that specimen looks a little goofy to me, i am not sure it is an occy... and ocidentalis means western... i am not sure if they mean the western part of this continent or the west when compared to the east as asia

[alupihan]

that's crazy. never even seen one in a photo before till now. beautiful!

[Bugs In Cyberspace]

Excellent video and information for one of my favorite insect groups! I had the pleasure of hunting for white velvet ants in the S. Arizona and SE California last month. Unfortunately, I came up empty handed.

Did you find these in association with creosote bushes?

Thanks for sharing!

[ZergFront]

So do they parasitize other inverts to reproduce? I like the little white velvet ant. Very cute and fuzzy.

I have a jumping spider species that mimics the coloring of the red and black variety to escape predators. Right now these are babies, so they don't have the stunning red color yet.