Expedition

(ominous music) (crickets chirping) No! Look at that! (gasping) I'm watching one of the most macabre sights in nature, right now. This is the world's largest species of wasp, the tarantula hawk wasp which is as long as my thumb and it has a hold of a fully grown, Mexican red-rump tarantula. The spider though, is not any longer putting up a fight because it's been paralyzed, but this is not gonna be her meal. This is a meal for her young. Here she goes. She's gonna grab it again. So she'll grab it in her jaws, and then start dragging it to a burrow. Once she's got it there, she'll lay one single egg onto the abdomen of the spider, and that will hatch out and eat it from the inside out, eating around the vital organs so the meat stays fresh for as long as possible. It's absolutely hideous. So macabre. The Mier would have watched things like this and had significance for it, because, how could you not? (owl hooting)