Sacken's velvet ant
Dasymutilla sackenii
Sacken's velvet ant looks like a fluffy ant, but it is really a wasp. The female has no wings and wears a creamy white fuzzy coat on her back. The males have wings and can fly.
Lives in
The western United States and Mexico: Oregon, California, Nevada and Baja California
What does it eat?
Like many grown-up wasps, it drinks sweet nectar from flowers.
How fast is it?
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
Sacken's 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
Its back is cream-coloured fuzz, but its belly and legs have black fuzz.
2
It is named after Carl Robert Osten-Sacken, a German diplomat who loved studying insects.
3
You see it most from May to October. In winter it is very rarely seen.
you asked
Most asked questions about Sacken's velvet ant
?Is a velvet ant really an ant?
No. It is a wasp. The females have no wings, so they look like hairy ants.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Dasymutilla sackenii
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Mutillidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Mutillidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Dasymutilla sackenii (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) Toby, some rights reserved (CC BY). CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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