Sharing the top spot at number 4 although rated slightly beneath the Bullet ant due to shorter lasting nature of its sting is the Tarantula hawk wasp whose resulting pain only lasts three fierce minutes. Texans have been worried with the rise of numbers but they don’t need to worry too much as Tarantula hawk attacks tarantulas not humans. you would have to pick one up or step on them to be stung.
Invertebrate Biologist Ben Hutchins of Texas Parks and Wildlife says “There are some vivid descriptions of people getting stung and in a peer reviewed journal the recommendation was to just lie down and start screaming, because few if any people could maintain verbal and physical coordination after getting stung by one of these things. You’re likely to just run off and hurt yourself”
The tarantula hawk attacks the tarantula from underneath the spider by flipping it over and stinging a soft bit of the tarantulas armour usually at the joints of the legs. One survey found that in 400 attacks only a single wasp was beaten by the spider but that’s not to say the spiders weren’t putting up a good fight. Almost instantly to sting paralyses the tarantula allowing the wasp to drag the spider to a pre dug burrow to lay a single egg on it. The wasp then leaves the burrow to let the egg hatch into larva which starts eating the still paralysed spider keeping it alive for as long as possible.
