Amid the beauty of the small, resilient alpine flowers of the 14,000-15,000 ft high Tololing battlefield of the Drass LoC, the proverbial “beast” was lurking. Upon one of the dainty white flowers was perched a dark, brooding insect with flaring, curved antennae that resembled in the miniature the horns of the Himalayan ibex. The insect, as identified by Mohali-based prof Gurpartap Singh, is attributable to the Ichneumonidae family of parasitoid wasps, whose global diversity could encompass a lakh of species.
Eating other arthropods alive is simply their way of life. It is a particularly thought-provoking family! Charles Darwin was so troubled by the perceived cruelty of the Ichneumonidae that it led him to doubt the nature and existence of a creator. Penning his thoughts on May 22, 1860, in a letter to the American botanist and naturalist Asa Gray, Darwin wrote: “But I own that I cannot see.
..evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us.
There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice..
..But the more I think the more bewildered I become.
” Singh lends us a glimpse into the “world of wasp horrors” that had so deeply engaged Darwin’s thoughts. “A majority of ichneumon species attack the immature stages of insects and spiders, .