A tarantula hawk feeds on a favorite treat: milkweed. While drinking the flower’s nectar, the colorful spider wasp’s legs fit into grooves of the milkweed flower containing pollen. The pollen adheres to the insect’s legs and when it flies to another milkweed, the pollen is transferred and the plant is pollinated, seeds are produced and more milkweed plants grow.
The female of the insect species is noted for searching out tarantulas, stinging them into paralysis and then laying an egg in the living host. The hatchling will feed on parts of the spider until it matures and then departs.