Sting
The tarantula hawk is relatively docile and rarely stings without provocation. However, the sting, particularly of P. formosa, is among the most painful of any insect, though the intense pain only lasts about three minutes. Commenting on his own experience, Justin Schmidt described the pain as "…immediate, excruciating pain that simply shuts down one's ability to do anything, except, perhaps, scream. Mental discipline simply does not work in these situations." In terms of scale, the wasp's sting is rated near the top of the Schmidt sting pain index, second only to that of the bullet ant, and is described by Schmidt as "blinding, fierce shockingly electric". Because of their extremely large stingers, very few animals are able to eat them; one of the few animals that can is the roadrunner. As many predatory animals avoid these wasps, many different insects are mimics, including various other wasps and bees (Mullerian mimics), as well as moths, flies (e.g., mydas flies), and beetles (e.g., Tragidion) (Batesian mimics).
Read more about this topic: Tarantula Hawk
Famous quotes containing the word sting:
“Not to be cowardly when it comes to our own actions! Not to leave them in the lurch!—The sting of conscience is indecent.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Yet there is a mystery here and it is not one that I understand: without the sting of otherness, of—even—the vicious, without the terrible energies of the underside of health, sanity, sense, then nothing works or can work. I tell you that goodness-what we in our ordinary daylight selves call goodness: the ordinary, the decent—these are nothing without the hidden powers that pour forth continually from their shadow sides. Their hidden aspects contained and tempered.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“Thou thyself hast been a libertine,
As sensual as the brutish sting itself.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)