The Sting That Drops You Screaming
The tarantula hawk carries a stinger up to 7 mm long and a sting rated 4 out of 4 on the Schmidt pain index — 'blinding, fierce, shockingly electric'. The advice from the man who rated it: lie down and scream. Yet the adult wasp only drinks nectar; the sting exists to turn a tarantula into a living cradle for one larva.
Four Out Of Four
The tarantula hawk is a large spider wasp of the Americas, and its sting sits at the very top of the Schmidt sting pain index: 4.0, the highest rating, shared only with the bullet ant. People who have been stung describe being dropped to the ground, unable to do anything but scream.
A Quarter Inch Of Stinger
The female’s stinger can reach about 7 mm — a quarter of an inch. Entomologist Justin Schmidt, who created the pain index by being stung by hundreds of species, described the tarantula hawk’s sting as “blinding, fierce, shockingly electric”. His practical advice for anyone stung was simple: lie down and scream, because the pain takes away the ability to do anything else, and you are safer on the ground than falling over.
Three Minutes, Then A Switch
The mercy of the tarantula hawk is that the pain, for all its intensity, is short. Most accounts put the worst of it at around three minutes, after which it fades abruptly — a switch rather than a slow burn, and very unlike the hours of pain that follow a bullet ant sting.
The Twist: A Vegetarian With A Weapon
For all that, the wasp never eats what it stings. Adult tarantula hawks feed on nectar, and only the females hunt. The sting is not for feeding — and it is not for you. It exists for one purpose: tarantulas.
A Living Cradle
A female tarantula hawk seeks out a tarantula, and a single sting aimed at the nerve centre that controls the spider’s legs paralyses it within a couple of seconds, permanently. She drags the limp spider into a burrow, lays one egg on it, and seals the tunnel. When the egg hatches, the larva feeds first on the spider’s haemolymph and then burrows into its abdomen, eating the still-living tarantula from the inside over a period of weeks — saving the vital organs for last so the spider stays alive and fresh.
The Loop
The sting that drops a human screaming was never built for a human. It was built to keep a tarantula alive, paralysed, for as long as a larva needs it.
