#mutillidae

[jupiterswasphouse]

[VIDEO TAKEN: SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2025 | Video ID: A video of a red and black red velvet ant crawling around and digging in various spots in sandy soil, looking for a good spot for a burrow /End IDs.]

Dasymutilla occidentalis, a red velvet ant looking for a spot to dig a burrow :]

[wetwaspwednesday]

Shoutout to bugs gotta be one of my favorite genders

This is a sona of mine, he doesn't have a name uet but hes a velvet ant 😎

Also heres some concept art of how transitions might work (for wingless wasps) in a bug world

[razehider]

i saw a weird amount of velvet ants last summer on the same gravel path and always around sundown, including the tongue-twisting Bidecoloratilla iberica, some Myrmilla, and this possible Smicromyrme. the recurring idea of 7-8pm as Velvet Ant Time is easily explainable by the fact that they were probably a lot more active and harder to find during daytime, but to this day i have not found a reason for their love of gravel and sand

(July 31st, 2025)

[herpsandbirds]

Velvet Ant (Odontomutilla haematocephala), female, family Mutillidae, Thailand

Velvet ants are actually wasps. The females are wingless, and the males are winged.

They are known for having exceptionally painful stings!

photograph by Phatsakorn Phaengnakhorn

[arachnology-enthusiast]

Pseudomethoca frigida

y'all I am fucking ecstatic. I have a list of "grail species" that I've been searching for all summer, and I didn't even have mutillids on there because I thought it was so unlikely. I have never heard of one being found around my location; I always thought I was way too far north, but I went on a hike yesterday, and all of a sudden, I find one three feet off the ground on a leaf. I didn't even know they climbed that high T-T.

[apsciencebylyn]

Demure. 🧡

Love the large (and tiny) pseudomethoca lasses.

[apocrital]

Waups is shapes

A contribution to the wasp doodles in the waspaganda community

[naturalist-journal]