Emerald Cockroach Wasps are cool, but the thing that makes them interesting (their reproductive behaviour) is honestly quite dark and fucked up, though I guess that’s just nature for you.
First, the female will find a cockroach and sting it in the abdomen to temporarily paralyse it’s legs so it can’t get away. After that, she will sting the roach again, this time in the brain, disabling it’s escape reflex and making it incapable of getting away from the wasp because it’s legs don’t work and even if they did, it’s brain won’t communicate the message to the legs. The wasp then bites off most of the roach’s antennae and uses the stub left behind like a leash to drag it back to it’s burrow. It lies the roach on it’s back underground, then lays a single egg on top of it’s belly. It buries the cockroach and egg alive, and the after 3-4 days, the egg hatches. The cockroach still can’t escape no matter what it tries to do, and at this point the larvae will burrow inside the cockroach and eat it from the inside out while it’s still alive. The larvae even know which organs to leave til last to keep the roach alive as long as possible, in agony and unable to leave because their brain no longer possesses an escape function.
