14 DAY TRIAL // A wasp species that has recently been described in an issue of the journal PLOS ONE shares its name with the dementors that much enjoyed freaking out Harry Potter and his friends, and sucking out their souls whenever given the chance.
Thus, the wasp species in question is known to the scientific community as Ampulex dementor, and there is little denying that it is more than deserves this moniker.
In said paper, scientists detail that, when the time comes for such insects to become mommies and daddies, the female goes in search of a cockroach which it stings in order to have its body filled with neurotoxins.
These neurotoxins make mincemeat of whatever free will or need to assert its independence the cockroach might have, and they compel it to follow the mother-to-be wasp to a carefully selected burrow, Mongabay informs.
Once the two insects reach their destination, the female wasp lays its egg on the roach's body. Not at all surprisingly, the baby wasp that emerges from this egg is not exactly cockroach-friendly either.
On the contrary, wildlife researchers say that, in its larva state, it feeds on its mother's victim. Later on, it turns into a pupa and, from then on, into a fully formed and utterly terrifying Ampulex dementor.
In case anyone was wondering, the cockroach does not live to drive the young wasp it helped bring into this world to school or at least watch it take its first steps.
Unlike other species, this wasp got it name following a popular vote at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, Germany. The names that folks who voted on this occasion got to choose from were: Ampulex mon, Ampulex plagiator, Ampulex dementor, and Ampulex bicolor.