In the animal kingdom, most fights end up in a battle to the death and that’s certainly true of the video we’re going to bring you below.

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The video features a tarantula hawk wasp – an animal that has literally been designed to hunt tarantulas –   going at it with a giant tarantula in a battle in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona that literally lasts almost four minutes. I’m not gonna spoil it and let you know who wins, so you might as well jump straight into the video below.

Place your bets:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pfdRBahCG8

Brutal right? The kid in the video – whose name is Cash – explains what happened:

The tarantula hawk is trying to paralyse the tarantula so that it could drag it back to its burrow and lay an egg on its abdomen.

When the egg hatches, it feeds off the still living tarantula until it becomes an adult wasp, which takes about a month.

I wasn’t scared about the hawk paralysing me, as it was so focused on the tarantula so I knew it wasn’t going to sting me.”

Tarantula hawks will only sting you if they feel threatened by you, so if you leave them alone you’ll be fine.

Even though they’re not lethal to humans, the tarantula hawk’s sting is the second most painful sting in the insect kingdom.

Tarantulas are pretty gentle and their bite is about as potent as a bee sting.

I felt excited to see it in action – it’s not rare that it happens but it’s rare to get to see it happen right in front of you.

Well yeah I guess if you’re not terrified of both the insects then it probably is. Sounds like Cash is well on his way to becoming the next Steve Irwin, but I reckon if I saw this going down whilst I was walking through the desert I would probably be hightailing it out there rather than going in for a closer look.

For more of the same, check out this massive insect trying to bite off a woman’s hand. Ouch.