Blue-eyed ensign wasp
The blue-eyed ensign wasp is a small black wasp with bright blue eyes. Its tummy is tiny and sits high up on its body, held up like a little flag. It has a very special job: it lays its eggs inside cockroach egg cases.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It is called an ensign wasp because its little tummy is held up like a flag, and ensign is an old word for a flag.
The mother lies on her side and drills into a tough cockroach egg case. It can take her half an hour of hard work.
She puts only one egg into each cockroach egg case.
The grown-up wasp lives for just two or three weeks.
Most asked questions about Blue-eyed ensign wasp
?Why is it called an ensign wasp?
Its small, flat tummy is held up high like a flag, and an ensign is a flag.
?Is the ensign wasp good to have around?
Many people think so, because its babies eat cockroach eggs, so there are fewer cockroaches.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Evania appendigaster
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Evaniidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Evaniidae
- Lives on
- Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Evania appendigaster (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 David Crummey. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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