Velvet Ant

[beetleman]

Family Mutillidae - Velvet Ants. In all the time I have been in the forums, there has not been many photos of velvet ants. I only found one in the forums by searching but I thought that Mike B. did a fuzzy white one also. Velvet ants are actually solitary female wasps. The males have wings. Here again , this picture is from work. She is on a wall I was scraping the paint off of and I grabbed my camera. Not the easiest critter to take a good picture of because she was moving at a good clip. About 11mm long.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_ant
A link to Gordons` velvet ant picture
http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... ght=velvet
Found Mike B.s`ant
http://photomacrography1.net/forum/view ... velvet+ant

A 30% crop

[Gordon C. Snelling]

Nice one Doug. Compared to last year this year has been a bust for Velvet ants. I have seen exactly two at my house.

[Ken Ramos]

You know I used to see these things quite often but now I seldom do. Maybe it is just that I am not really looking for them or more than likely, I always have my attention atuned to some other form of life in my various quests. A very good image here Doug The last time I saw one, it was crawling around my front lawn.