Making Velvet Ants
Sitting beside a canal near my home in Kolkata in
West Bengal, I spotted a couple of ants on a spiral ginger
bush. A closer look revealed they were not ants at all, but
wasps of the Mutillidae family. Known as velvet ants Nemka
viduata, they resemble common ants and have dense hair
on their bodies. Throughout the mating process, the orange-black, winged male holds on to the wingless, yellowish-brown
female’s neck with his mandibles, often even lifting off in
fl ight or walking together to a safer place. This possibly
suggests that larger males that can lift a wider range
of female sizes, have a reproductive advantage. Prior to
copulating, the male will rhythmically strokeSanctuary |Natural History