This Is The Creepiest, Sickest Insect In Texas
Texas has the creepiest, weirdest, most disgusting insects ever. Some can hurt you but, fortunately, the biggest one is more of a danger to spiders than us.
The lone star state is crawling ... no pun intended ... with all kinds of insects and while most of them are simply annoying, some can hurt you.
One in particular really packs a wallop while another has a horrifying and disgusting gestation process that's straight out of a science fiction movie. Seriously, we're talking "Aliens" type stuff here ...
The Asp Caterpillar doesn't bite but, it looks kind of "pet-able". Don't. It has spines that will cause skin irritation and incredible pain that can last for hours. Eastern Velvet Ants also look sort of "plush", hence the name, but their bite is also very painful.
The Brown Recluse spider has a nasty bite too that you probably won't feel, nor will you notice pain or other effects until much later. Their venom causes necrosis, fever, convulsions, itching, nausea and muscle pain. It's a hemotoxic venom, the same stuff rattlesnakes pack.
The Texas Redheaded Centipede is another biter and it really does a number on you, causing "sharp, local pain and swelling" along with "nausea, headache, and skin necrosis".
Here's the really disgusting one ... the Tarantula Hawk. It, and the Brown Recluse, are the only ones listed here that El Pasoans really need to worry about. They can top 2 inches in length and their bite is ranked as the 2nd most painful in the world.
The bite won't kill you and the pain dissipates. It's really spiders that need to worry about these guys and that's where the disgusting, "Aliens" stuff comes in.
The wasp paralyzes a tarantula with its sting, then drags it to a nest, where a single egg is laid on the spider's abdomen, and the entrance is covered. When the wasp larva hatches, it creates a small hole in the spider's abdomen, then enters and feeds voraciously, avoiding vital organs for as long as possible to keep the spider alive. spectrumlocalnews.com
A few weeks later, as an adult, the Tarantula Hawk busts out of the poor tarantulas abdomen and goes looking for a tarantula of its own.
Yuck.
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