Meet the Tarantula Hawk, part beauty, part nightmare, all purpose. With a sting ranked among the most painful in the natural world, this wasp doesn’t fight for sport. It paralyzes a tarantula, drags it underground, and lays a single egg inside the still-living host. When the larva hatches, it eats from the inside out, carefully avoiding the vital organs until the very end.
It’s a method so efficient, so unnervingly precise, it inspired the life cycle of the xenomorph in Ridley Scott’s Alien.Nature thought of it first.
⚡️Original pen & ink illustration up for grabs! Highest bidder takes it home (bidding in my Instagram Stories). 100% of proceeds go straight to @nationalparkservice — you just cover postage. Bid here https://www.instagram.com/stories/andycmarshall/3740599670558418128?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igsh=MTJkMGpmdHZvdGYxbQ==
Kids Book Illustrator Andy C Marshall 
Interesting post, Andy, and I like your sketch too. Actually, after reading, I looked up the most powerful sting, and on the Schmidt Sting Pain index, the tarantula hawk registers as 4.0, up there with the bullet ant and the warrior wasp. Do you often draw insects, then?
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Yes it’s definitely one of the most painful stings. Yes I’ve been working on a series of kids books titled – Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet – highlighting the weird and wonderful animals kids have probably never heard of. My dream is that awareness of unique species might help protect them and their environments moving into the future.
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