THE COW KILLER OR VELVET ANT—A WINGLESS WASP
(Mutilla simillima, Sm.)
Can you imagine an insect daring enough to brave the stings of the thousands of workers in a bee’s nest? This wingless, solitary female ant lives habitually in their nests and eats the food they have so busily gathered, an unbidden and probably a most unwelcome guest. Powerful jaws, formidable sting, an armor-plated shell to protect her from the stings of the bees and wasps in whose nests she lives, seem to fit her for the strange life she leads.
If you should find her mate he would doubtless be on the wing, for unlike all others of the order, it is the male alone which flies. So different from their mates do some of these male cow killers look that they have often been mistaken for quite different species.
It is supposed that the female lays her eggs inside a bumble-bee grub and in a few days’ time they hatch and eat the babies up, from the inside outwards. Then they hatch again, so to speak, as full-fledged cow killers and feast upon the honey of their hosts.
