Tiny Fly TAKES ON Giant Wasp

You might think this giant 2-inch cicada killer wasp has nothing to worry about from any other insect. After all, its stinger has a paralyzing venom so potent that its prey is left immobilized for the rest of its life, and it's strong enough to carry the weight of insects twice its size up 80-foot trees. But the cruel thing with nature is that nothing is ever truly invincible, and one tiny insect a hundred times smaller has made it its life mission to screw over these wasps, the satellite fly. Now a lot of you might have some outdated and honestly downright offensive views on flies, and I have to admit I too once shared the same delusion. But just as I have, you need to abandon your ideals of wasp dominance and replace them with the holy doctrine of fly superiority, and this little satellite fly shows exactly why these bugs have got wasps beat on almost every level. This cicada killer is guarding its burrow. Within lies a paralyzed cicada and its egg, which will hatch and eat the doomed bug while it's still alive. But this tomb is far from complete. More cicadas and eggs need to be added, so the burrow entrance is left open and vulnerable, and this wasp will risk its life defending it. Getting at a pre-packaged paralyzed meal is something a lot of insect predators would love to get their jaws on, but very few are able to get past this devoted parent. The first to try is this velvet ant, an insect with a sting just as powerful as the cicada killers, and armed with some of the strongest armor in the insect world, that not even this wasp can punger. The velvet ant is hoping to lay its own egg within the burrow, so it can eat both the larval wasp and the cicada. But security is not about to let that happen, and the cicada killer uses its size and command of the sky to chase it off. The velvet ant goes home a loser, but as a consolation prize it is getting its own video pretty soon. However, since they're not an ant at all and just a kind of flightless wasp, it's relegated to a side character in this fly propaganda video. Speaking of, here comes our protagonist. The venom and the armor of the velvet ant wasn't a match for the cicada killer, so how is our tiny hero going to overcome such a powerful foe? Well, the satellite fly has a few abilities that even this giant wasp can't contend with. First off, satellite flies, like other flies, have the fastest reaction times on earth. A normal house fly perceives the world four times slower than we do, enabling it to dodge and react to attacks with ease. And the satellite fly sees the world even slower than that. But reaction time isn't the only thing keeping it out of harm's way. All flies have weird looking organs called halteres, reduced wings that have developed into living gyroscopes that balance and stabilize them in flight. But satellite flies take these adaptations to their absolute maximum potential, and when they're used together, make them completely untouchable to any enemy. The most accurate flyer of any animal. Its reaction time makes its body move at precisely the same time and speed as its enemy, while its halteres keep its body so stable that it almost seems like the satellite fly is attached to the cicada killer through an invisible thread. No matter what the wasp does, trying to chase away or escape the satellite fly is completely useless. Like the velvet ant, this little fly is looking to lay its eggs in a cicada the wasp catches, so its larva can have all the food to themselves and starve out the wasps. All it has to do is wait for this cicada killer to go off and catch a cicada. Then it'll dive bomb the paralyzed insect and drop its larva onto the prey in mid-air like living missiles. But the satellite fly has made a serious miscalculation. It assumed the wasp's gender. Wrongly. This is a male cicada killer. He doesn't hunt cicadas at all and instead furiously defends the female's burrow from intruders. He doesn't even have a venomous stinger. This won't do for the satellite fly. There's no telling when the female will be back with prey. However, there is a cicada locked within the depths of the burrow. She just needs her larva to reach it. Unfortunately, besides misgendering, her only other weakness is tight spaces where she isn't able to make use of her superior flight, so she can't crawl down the burrow herself. It all seems lost, but the satellite fly has one final trick up her sleeve. Because the cicada killer isn't able to chase away or kill her, this fly can land right by the burrow with no risk of being attacked. Satellite flies have been known to give birth to their larva just outside of the wasp's burrow, and the newborn maggots are able to crawl into the hole and devour the cicada themselves. Satellite flies only reproduce by having their larva take over the burrows of cicada killers and other wasps, so every single one you see is the result of a giant wasp losing a battle with this tiny fly. Flies are a lot more than mere pests. Some are venomous predators like the wasp-hunting robber flies I've covered in previous videos, and others are body-snatching mind-controllers that force their prey to dig their own graves. That video and more covering flies and wasps are on the way, so in the meantime, check out my full-length cicada killer video where I film some incredible footage of them hunting, and I'll see you guys next time.