First cool insect 👀

As we were walking along the canal pathway behind our hostel, Kylie spotted the our first cool insect of the trip! This little parasitic wasp is called an Ensign wasp (Evaniidae; Hymenoptera). There are over 400 species found across the world. It is not uncommon to find them in cities such as Bangkok because of their cool parasitic life history. There were two individuals – one stationary with bright blue eyes, and the other twitchy with bright green eyes. I assumed the twitchy one was a male, waving its wings and leg tapping in an attempt to attract a mate, but this is just a guess.

Ensign wasps lay their eggs inside cockroach ootheca. An ootheca is an egg case that female cockroaches produce. The wasp eggs hatch and the developing larvae feed on the cockroach eggs. I was amazed at how tiny their abdomens are, and would have loved to see how they manage to parasitize ootheca. Unfortunately I didn’t get a shot of the wasp parasitizing an ootheca as we did not see any ootheca around, however earlier that day we were lucky enough (lol) to find a cockroach in the street and got a good shot to complement this post. 

Funny enough, we were sitting on a patio on Khaosan Road eating lunch and we saw the roach on its back miserably flailing its arms. We had agreed to flip it or put it out of its misery once we were finished, but one of the restaurant promoters on the sidewalk beat us to it. Rather than stomping on it, he showed a brief glimpse of compassion for what most would see as an unpleasant pest and gently flipped it over. Ky and I flashed him a thumbs up and a smile and continued to enjoy lunch 🙂 

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