Panda ant
Though these black-and-white insects are part of a group called velvet ants, these “pandas” are actually Chilean wasps. With a fuzzy black-and-white body, white head, and black-ringed eyes, the panda ant’s resemblance to the iconic Chinese bear is uncanny.
It’s mainly the females that look ant-like, says Denis J. Brothers of the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa, by email. Their striking markings may act as a warning to predators—their stings pack a punch.
The males, which have wings, look much more like we expect wasps to, and they don’t have stingers. That’s because females’ stingers are modified ovipositors, or egg-laying organs, which males don’t have, says Justin Schmidt, entomologist at the University of Arizona and author of Sting of the Wild.
The panda-ant may look cute, but its sting is painful! Technically not an ant but a wasp, its colors and patters are aposematic, warning other predators to stay away. Only the female is wingless, and despite sometimes being referred to as the “cow-killer ant,” its sting isn’t the most deadly or painful: this title belongs to a type of harvester ant that can kill a two-pound mammal with just six stings.
These wasps, which can be found in Chile and Argentina, are solitary, do not live in colonies or have “nests,” and are not aggressive. However, the panda-ant is parasitic, and lays its eggs on or near other ground-nesting insect larva or pupa; the hatched young then use the larva as a food source.
