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The Velvet Ant is not an ant at all. It’s a parasitic wasp of the Mutillidae family. They have dense, often vividly colored hair over their bodies. There are several species native to Texas. Their color variations are so numerous that it’s often impossible to identify the species without a specimen.
This species is called “cow killers” because of their painful sting, which rates 3 or 4 on the Schmit's sting pain index, along with bullet ants and warrior wasps. (It has never been proven that they kill cows.)
Female velvet ants have the longest stinger compared to body size of any stinging wasp, ant, or bee. .
They are not aggressive, stinging only when threatened by touch. Don’t pick them up, step, or roll over on them!
Velvet ants are solitary insects, spending most of their lives alone. They range from 0.2 to 1 inches long. They have a three-segmented, slightly elongated body, with a rounded head, thorax, and abdomen, and jointed legs. Their tough exoskeletons make them almost impervious to predators. There are no predators known to specifically hunt them. They have a number of effective warning signals that convince predators to leave them alone, including their striking color and painful sting..
Males may be slightly larger and have wings, but females are wingless, with compound eyes and large, well-developed antenna.
Velvet ants do not build nests.. Females do not build nests; they dig through into the nest of ground-nesting ants, bees, and other wasps, where they lay eggs, usually one per host nest, on host pupae. Velvet ant pupae feed on the pupae of the host insect, then spin a cocoon, from which the adult velvet ant emerges.
Photo source: https://www.reddit.com/.../whats_this_ant_species_called
Information source: https://factanimal.com/velvet-ant/
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