Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Mother Nature is freaking weird.


This has nothing what so ever to do with Jiu-jitsu.  

Yesterday when I was walking out of my house, I noticed a big giant black fuzzy caterpillar on my door frame.  I pointed it out to the kids and went on my way.  I live in Florida.  Giant bugs are always somewhere. 

The next morning I noticed that the caterpillar was covered in white fuzz.  Upon further inspection, I noticed the white fuzz was tiny little wriggly maggoty looking things making tiny white cocoons.  After I vomited in my mouth a little, I took a picture.


And being that I like bugs, I tend not to kill them,, I just relocate them, but this one was clearly in the middle of something, so I left it there.


If you look toward the top or bottom to the left you can clearly see the little maggoty things.

I figured they were it's babies... after all lots of insects carry their babies around on their backs. 



Then I realized that caterpillars are larvae themselves so those couldn't possibly be its babies...

So, I went back out there and looked at it again and the caterpillar was leaving its disgusting maggoty cocoon behind.


So, I left the babies there in their nasty sack of maggoty fuzz.

And then I Googled that shit.

Now look at that first picture again, see that green drippy stuff.. that is blood.. Because a WASP laid its babies INSIDE the caterpillar AND THEY ATE THEIR WAY OUT.

Again, for clarity.  THE WASP LARVAE ATE THEIR WAY OUT OF THE CATERPILLAR, and then made their homes on it's back.  WTF wasp babies, WTF, as if your adult state isn't one of the most foul states of insect on the planet already.

Needless to say the nasty sack of wasp babies is gone.

Kinda cool though.






2 comments:

  1. ...yet the caterpillar crawled off afterwards?! There are a lot of wasps that lay their eggs in a host that they've paralyzed (eg tarantula). The eggs hatch, the maggots eat the still-living (!) host saving the vital bits for last of course, then the maggots metamorphose, etc. I've never heard of the host surviving. Cool observation even if it didn't have anything to do with bjj!

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  2. Yeah, it crawled away... I expected it to die, and maybe it did... I looked but couldn't find him anywhere... but yeah, it was a neat thing to come across. :)

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