“…and today we’re talking about the worst thing about wasp prison. But more on that later.”
Slender, shiny, and carrying the emotional energy of a horror movie villain, the Dementor Wasp floats through the insect world like a tiny eight-legged HR nightmare. This is not a creature that rushes, panics, or gets its hands dirty—this is a creature that plans. With surgical precision and the patience of a chess grandmaster, it turns chaos into compliance and free will into a suggestion, like the Dementor Wasp here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.
Description
- Color: Red and black body with slightly yellowish wings.
- Body Shape: Long, slender legs and a distinct narrow waist (petiole) typical of cockroach wasps.
Measure Up
Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words Measure Up into ldtaxonomy at gmail dot com.
Length
Females about 9.6–10.9 mm long.
Males haven’t been described in detail yet.
The worker weaver ant is a common ant species in Thailand, famous for building leaf nests. True or false– one worker weaver ant is the same length as a dementor wasp.
Weight
0.025–0.03 grams
Rambutan fruit is a tropical fruit native to Southeast Asia. It’s kind of like a lychee fruit, but the shell is furry like the lorax. True or False– 1,000 wasps go into the weight of a rambutan fruit.
Fast Facts
Known primarily from tropical forests in Thailand, the dementor wasp inhabits environments where cockroaches — its primary prey — are abundant.
It may be eaten by birds, reptiles, spiders and amphibians that share its habitat but…
- Warning coloration (red and black) that may signal toxicity or a sting
- A painful sting, which can deter vertebrate predators
- Quick, agile flight and a mostly solitary lifestyle, reducing detection
It’s sting is not super dangerous to people. Though it might be painful like a bee sting. Its venom is highly specialized for insects, especially cockroaches, and does not affect the human nervous system the way it does its prey.
It was part of a biodiversity discovery effort in the Greater Mekong region, an area recognized for high numbers of newly described species.
Major Fact: Put Me In, Roach
- The wasp delivers a precisely targeted sting directly into specific nerve centers of a cockroach’s brain.
- Instead of killing the cockroach, the venom selectively shuts down its escape reflex—panic is canceled, survival instincts revoked.
- The cockroach remains alive, mobile, and physically unharmed, just deeply unmotivated.
- This chemical manipulation prevents the cockroach from running away, solving the wasp’s problem of hauling a very fast, very resistant victim.
- The wasp then chews off part of the cockroach’s antennae and drinks the hemolymph like a victory smoothie.
- Using the remaining antenna as a leash, the wasp calmly leads the cockroach to a burrow like it’s walking a dog that’s given up on life.
- Inside the burrow, the wasp lays an egg on the cockroach’s body and seals the entrance.
- When the larva hatches, it feeds externally first, avoiding vital organs to keep the host alive and fresh.
- Later, the larva moves inside and consumes the cockroach from the inside out, organ by organ, no rush.
- This strategy ensures a perfectly preserved, non-struggling food source, making it one of nature’s most unsettling examples of neurological hijacking.
Ending
So enjoy a nice roach, share your gift, and hack the brains of your enemies so you can drink their milk shake drink it up like the dementor wasp here in LDT.