MALI: Every day, the dementor wasp (Ampulex dementor) flies through the rain forests of Thailand looking for cockroaches. When it finds one, it stings, injecting a special venom that makes the roach unable to control its own movements. The wasp then helps “guide” the cockroach back to its nest, where the wasp eventually lays eggs that hatch into larvae that feed upon the roach’s flesh.
The wasp, which is named after the hideous Azkaban guards from the Harry Potter books, is just one of the 139 new species that scientists and naturalists discovered in Southeast Asia in 2014, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Since 1997, researchers have found 2,216 previously unknown species here, an average of one discovery every three days. This area of the Mekong River ecosystem, which includes areas of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam, hosts incredible biodiversity that remains little known.
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