The Digger Wasp: She Just Knows (Insect)

Our group was waiting for the orangutans to arrive at Camp Leakey, the feeding station in Borneo where the famed researcher Dr. Biruté Galdikas had set up a beautiful place to help trafficked orangutan orphans recover. Then we noticed her. A digger wasp. And we stood transfixed watching her work.

Watch the video HERE! You'll hear me and my friend Julie absolutely astonished at what we were witnessing.

She had a katydid, a large one, many times her own size. And she was dragging him across the ground with total purpose and focus, headed somewhere specific.

What I didn't know yet was everything that had already happened before we found her.

She had hunted that katydid. Found it, stung it with a perfectly aimed sting to paralyze it — not kill it, paralyze it, keeping it alive and fresh for what came next. Then she had dug a burrow in exactly the right spot. And now she was dragging her prey home.

We watched her maneuver that katydid into the hole. Then she laid a single egg on that living katydid — her larva would hatch to find fresh, preserved food waiting, exactly what it needed, exactly when it needed it. Then she covered the hole, smoothed the dirt, and was gone. And remarkably, she would do this only around ten times in her entire lifetime.

She never hesitated. She never second-guessed. She knew exactly what her baby would need before it existed, and she went and got it with every skill she had.

The resilience lesson is one I find deeply human: trust your knowing. We don't always need an instruction manual. Sometimes we just know what the people we love need — and the most loving thing we can do is act on that knowledge with everything we have. The working overtime for the gift that matters. The driving hours to show up. The last piece saved because you knew it was their favorite.