Jewel wasp hunts down Cockroach
These little green wasps don't look at cockroaches the same way we do. We might see pests, they see an incubator for their offspring.
Jewel wasps begin their adult lives by busting out of the dried out husk of a recently deceased cockroach, after hollowing it out over a week and taking care to avoid munching on any vital organs that might kill its living host prematurely.
With surgical precision the cockroach is hunted down and injected with the mother wasps neurotoxin; the first sting seeks to immobilize, the second one seeks out certain sections of the roach's brain in order to garner full compliance.
Once achieved, the lumbering buffet is guided to a tomb, prepared by mom herself to house her baby and its built-in breakfast-lunch-and-dinner.
A single egg, laid onto one of the roaches legs, and the larva within it will be the last semblance of company this roach will ever get. Soon after sealing the hole this egg will hatch and the jewel wasp larva will burrow inside the roach to get at its nourishing innards.
Although the wasp's venom will prevent the cockroach from moving while the larva feeds, the same cannot be said about what the cockroach feels while it does so. In this most disturbing of exits, I can only hope that any roach who is destined for a fate like this moves towards the light painlessly.
Read more about the jewel wasp here:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...