Ignorance must have been bliss for Chrissy Teigen when she and 2-year-old daughter Luna were filmed playing with what they believed was a harmless bug on Wednesday:
That’s because, as many Twitter users pointed out, the creature the model and cookbook author allowed to land on her arm and invited her daughter to kiss and call “nice” was most likely a tarantula hawk, a species of spider wasp:
According to the U.K.’s Natural History Museum, the tarantula hawk can dish out “the most painful wasp sting in the world.” One entomologist has previously recommended humans who get stung by one “just lie down and start screaming.”
“The pain, while crippling, subsides rather quickly,” reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The NHM also notes, however, that “tarantula hawks are fairly docile unless provoked.” And, per Wired, the males (which the one in the video appears to be, due to its straight antenna) can’t sting at all.
“Oh my god but he was so nice,” Teigen responded, before lightheartedly suggesting the particular critter she came face-to-face with could be “one of the good ones” and that she may also be “Tarzana, queen of the bugs.”
Teigen then issued this plea:
Her video and tweets immediately went viral, with someone amusingly tweaking the “Tarantula Hawk” Wikipedia page to refer to the incident.
Other tweeters also had a field day at what appeared to be Teigen’s close call with nature.
Teigen later shared a video of herself and Luna to Instagram, in which she asked her daughter to say, “We’re alive!”
