This incredible footage of a wasp and a tarantula tangled up in a fight to the death was The video overnight. And boy, am I glad I wasn't in the middle of it.

The video was captured by a resident in Congress, Arizona, in the US, and shows a tarantula hawk wasp brutally attacking a tarantula, as Jason Gaines writes for Business Insider.

As you can see in the footage above, the wasp flips the spider over on its back - an impressive feat given their respective sizes - and then stings it to paralyse it.

The video ends with the wasp dragging the unconscious spider off into the bushes, but unfortunately, things are bound to get worse off screen.

Tarantula hawks, which include species of wasp in the genera Pepsis and Hemipepsis, have just one purpose in life - to seal spiders in their specially designed nests or burrows and lay their eggs on their abdomens. 

Once the larva hatches, the baby eats through the poor captive's abdomen and feeds on its insides - avoiding the vital organs in order to keep the spider alive for round two.

If that's not nightmarish enough, when the wasp becomes an adult, it then ruptures out of the spider's abdomen to continue the whole brutal life cycle.

I have to admit, I never thought I'd be feeling sorry for a big hairy tarantula, but I really, really do. You fought valiantly, spider, but unfortunately, you were outmatched, and you're now going to be feasted on by the children of your assailant. 

Oh, and, for the record, the female Pepsis grossa wasps, which are a species of tarantula hawk, have the second most painful insect sting in the world.

Seriously though, nope.

Source: Business Insider