Vespoidea

Their shell is so strong that stainless steel insect pins sometimes bend without penetrating the body (Schmidt pg. 7). Their hard shell proves difficult to other arthropods. Adult tarantula spiders are unable to penetrate through their hard exoskeleton even with their impressive fangs, causing the tarantula to quickly release the cow killer. Their secondary important defense is their immense leg strength. The cow-killer’s thorax houses not powerful muscle for flight as in most insects, but instead huge muscles that power the legs. Their powerful legs combined with their round, slippery body enable the insect to wrestle itself free from a predator’s jaws, rapidly run away and escape. Like the cow-killers, other insects in the superfamily Vespoidea (infraorder Aculeata, order Hymenoptera) contain numerous defense mechanisms. Focusing on the family Formicidae, better known as ants, evolved from wasp-like ancestors during the Cretaceous period, further diversifying after the rise of flowering plants (Ward pg. 549). Ants attack and defend themselves through a variety of mechanisms, often injecting or spraying chemicals, such as formic acid in the case of formicine ants, alkaloids and piperidines in fire ants, and a variety of other chemical concoctions and protein components in other ant families (Schmidt pg. 82). Venom is the defense of choice for many ants (family Formicidae). It is injected from an ovipositor that has been evolutionarily modified into a singing apparatus (see:…