THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

Tavishi

I've never watched The Devil Wears Prada, and I haven't the faintest what the movie is about. But this morning, I learned that the title is true: the devil does wear Prada.

I know this because I met her, and she was wearing this $4,800 Prada coat.

Luckily, I was able to get a photo with her before she sent me to the depths of hell to burn in pain.

Her name is the thistledown velvet ant, or Dasymutilla gloriosa for short and I met her at Coons Bluff Recreation Area.

horsises

The devil is full of inherent contradictions. For one, her name is a misnomer on two levels. Despite the fluffy appearance, all velvet ants are known for having a resoundingly hard exoskeleton, unlike the characteristic softness of velvet. Also, she's not an ant, but a wingless wasp. Her disguise is a LIE. She's not gentle, soft, or harmless on any level. Rather, her infamy comes from the pain from both her deception and her sting.

Most velvet ants are open about how dangerous they are, and wear brightly colored coats as a mark of their evil:

this one is called a cowkiller!!!

They're also sometimes called cowkillers. So.

Anyways, thistledown velvet ants camouflage themselves, and are white fluffy demons because they want to look like the seeds of the creosote bush.

Male thistledown velvet ants actually look like wasps, and they're also harmless. Only female velvet ants sting, because their stingers are modified ovipositors. Men don't have ovipositors, because they don't really have ova to posit (see: they are men. no eggs).

Instead, the males look something like this:

Not only are they really mean and sting you really hard, but they also EAT BABIES. They come into the world, and the first thing they do is EAT A BABY. Literally it is their first meal ever.

And yes, I am being dramatic, but it is earned. When a male velvet ant and a female velvet ant love each other very much, they mate and lay a single egg (why only one? that's so k selected core) in another insect's burrow on top of another pupa. Then, when the egg hatches, the baby velvet ant EATS the pupa it was laid on top of, then goes out into the world to wreak havoc.

I am not convinced that velvet ants didn't crawl out of the depths of hell.

I will say, that just like rattlesnakes, they warn you before they get you. And just like rattlesnakes, I think they're pretty damn cool. Before velvet ants attack, they make very loud squeaky sounds when contracting the abdomen, which I also got the privilege of hearing yesterday! I didn't get bitten, but this is in fact how I noticed the Prada-wearing-fake-ant-devil-creature on the ground.