My routine most mornings is to take an early, leisurely stroll around the veggie garden with coffee in hand and Renard by my side to look everything over and to make sure the deer (or any other hungry critter) didn't eat everything during the night. It's usually very quiet and peaceful in the wee hours of the mornings (no mowers or other equipment roaring in the distance, just lots of birds chirping to let me know they are glad for another day) and I always enjoy the way the garden looks in the softness of the light from the early morning sun.
Since most gourds flower at night, I am usually able to catch a lot of activity on the gourd flowers during the early morning too. Usually it's just lots and lots of bumblebees, but this morning I found something on one of my luffa gourd flower clusters that I've never seen before.
I was fascinated! Upon close inspection, it looked like a very, very large, furry, red ant and, even though the flower cluster was at least 3 or 4 feet off the ground, the insect didn't appear to have any wings and must have crawled up the luffa vine. Although I didn't measure it, I would estimate that it was about an inch long.
So, I snapped some photos, continued my stroll, and eventually came back inside to investigate.
Red Velvet Ants
After a little research, I'm pretty what was crawling on my luffa was a Red Velvet Ant. Interestingly enough, Red Velvet Ants aren't actually ants, but are wasps (geez, who is in charge of naming these things?). The males have transparent wings, but the females don't have any wings at all. They are solitary wasps and have short, dense, often brightly colored hair on their bodies.
Adult Red Velvet Ants feed on nectar and aren't harmful to gardens or plants. They do, however, sting and, although they are not said to be aggressive, have needle-like stingers in their abdomens and, like most wasps, will sting if threatened. I was a bit horrified to read that Red Velvet Ants are sometimes called "cow killers" because their sting is said to be so painful that it could kill a cow. (Oh yes, I am very, very glad I didn't try to touch it or make it angry by shoving my camera in it's face!)
Join the Conversation!