8/01/2006

big bug


click for big

Some sort of testosterone enhanced jurassic looking hornet that the cats knocked down over the weekend. About 2" long. Yeesh. Any budding entymologists know what thisun is? I will do some research.

I speculate that it is some sort of plutonium mutated hornet that was entombed in an ancient mudhole deep in a canyon here in NM, released by recent thunderstorms and in search of the dinosaurs that it snacked on millenia ago.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's a cool picture! not an entimologist type of guy, but I think that's a spider wasp. I'm not sure I'm ever seen one with the yellow/black stripes, but the rest of it looks about tight. They're very cool, they sting and paralyze a spider, drag them to a nest, lay an egg on them, and then search for more. Babe wakes up with a yummy morning snack...

Anonymous said...

I'm not an entomologist but I played one at university and I reckon it's a horntail

http://pest.ca.uky.edu/EXT/master_gardener/entbasics/hymenoptera/hymenoptera.shtml

Tarik Saleh said...

I think the horntail/hymonoptera guess is the most likely. The big "stinger" apperently is an ovipositor for egg depositing. I ran it by the entymologist in residence at the lab and it appears that it is not dangerous at all.