Thread by @MetroUK

Getting up close and personal with a live murder hornet isn’t something many of us would rush to do 😲

However, we’re not insect enthusiast Ebira Mosura who decided to remove a living parasite from one of the hornets with some tweezers 👇
metro.co.uk/2022/07/05/man…

Murder hornets, in case you weren’t aware, aren’t to be trifled with.

They can grow as large as two-and-a-half inches long and are capable of delivering multiple stings, each carrying toxic venom.

Which, in some cases, can be fatal 😶

Still, Mosura noticed one particular hornet in his home city of Tokyo was acting a bit strangely.

So naturally he caught the insect and brought it inside to ‘rescue’ it.

Footage shows the DIY vet using tweezers to pull a gooey, white worm from the murder hornet’s belly.

All while the insect is still alive and he’s holding it between his fingers.

We want to look away but we can't 👀

Ebira said: 🗣️‘It was hard to see but I was pretty sure that the hornet had a parasite in its belly.

🗣️‘I’m not a professional but you have to be knowledgeable to successfully do this.’

The self-proclaimed insect lover can be seen slowly pulling the parasitic worm from the hornet and laying it out on his finger.

He released the hornet afterwards and fed the parasite to his pet frog.

The large parasite found inside the hornet’s stomach was a female Strepsiptera, which attaches to hosts such as bees, wasps, grasshoppers, and leafhoppers.

The parasite controls its host to avoid colony tasks and cluster on vegetation so it could mate with other Strepsipteras 👇
metro.co.uk/2022/07/05/man…