Bug card No. 1344 of 1,500
Thistledown velvet ant
Dasymutilla gloriosa
The thistledown velvet ant looks like a fluffy white ant, but it is really a wasp. The females have no wings and run about on the hot desert ground. Their white fuzz makes them look like the fuzzy fruit of a desert bush.
Lives in
Deserts of the southwestern United States and Mexico
What does it eat?
Grown-up velvet ants sip nectar from flowers.
How fast is it?
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
Thistledown velvet ant about 22 km/h (14 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
A car driving in town about 50 km/h (31 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
Only the females have no wings. The males can fly.
2
Its white fuzz helps it stay cooler in the hot desert sun than its orange cousins.
you asked
Most asked questions about Thistledown velvet ant
?Is the thistledown velvet ant really an ant?
No. It is a wasp. The females have no wings, so they look like big fuzzy ants.
?Where does the thistledown velvet ant live?
In the deserts of the southwestern United States and Mexico.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Dasymutilla gloriosa
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Mutillidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Mutillidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Dasymutilla gloriosa (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by (c) Xochitl Zambrano, some rights reserved (CC BY). CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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