I’ve been doing our Absurd Creature of the Week column for almost two years now, covering damn near 100 creatures and getting somewhere around 35 percent of the facts right. Not bad! (Editor's note: ±65 percent, p=0.04.) I’m going to keep writing those, if you don’t mind, but now we have a new addition to the Absurd Creature family: a live-action show of epic proportions. Alright, maybe that’s overstating things. We’d need more explosions for it to be epic, and our budget doesn’t allow for that. But it’s still pretty neat.
First up is the tarantula hawk, which does not OK things to tarantulas, as its name would suggest. It's got a sting so powerful that the actual scientific treatment for a human victim is to "just lie down and scream." Fun stuff.
So happy watching and appreciating that you're not a tarantula. And I’m happy to hear from you with suggestions on what to cover next. If it’s weird and we can find footage of it, it’s fair game. You can get me at matthew_simon@wired.com or on Twitter at @mrMattSimon.
