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PARIS: Researchers have revealed that a soul-sucking wasp is one of 139 species recently discovered in south-east Asia. The species, called Ampulex dementor, first paralyses its prey with its sting, and then starts feeding on it.
However, the wasp is currently living in one of the top five threatened habitat in the world, said the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund. Animal charity WWF has to say that many of the other new species are also living under threat.
The name of the wasp was decided by visitors to Berlin’s natural history museum, in honor of the dementor characters from the Harry Potter series who steal people’s souls.
The dementor wasp injects its venom into belly of cockroaches to paralyze them before eating. The venom is so strong that the cockroach appears to have been turned into a passive zombie, said WWF.
The cockroach experiences such an effect from the sting that while it can make movements, but can’t direct its own body. Thus, it becomes a very easy task for the wasp to drag the cockroach to safe place before eating it.
A long-fanged bat and a color-changing frog are among other animals newly discovered. Official classification for a total of 90 new plants, 23 reptiles, 16 amphibians, nine fish, and one mammal discovered in Greater Mekong, the region located across Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, had come in 2014.
