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They're smart fuckin birds, I believe in them

me -

a person who actively seeks them out, interacts with them on the daily, gets all up in their business, researches them

is continually deemed as less significant or trustworthy or accurate than the perception of a person who -

was stung one time and religiously avoided wasps ever since

you could be stung, once, twice, or even a hundred times.

it wouldn’t even come close to representing the nature of a taxonomic group that is comprised of hundreds of thousands of different species, and millions upon millions of individuals.

yet, you’d probably find, if you took the time to experience it. without fear, without hatred -

that wasps are gentle, curious, brilliant, beautiful, intelligent, indescribably valuable gems made of all the wonder the earth has to offer

animals who, like all others, want nothing more than to survive.

maybe even, if they’re lucky enough -

Even in the house it was LOUD.  Probably the loudest thing I have ever experienced but at a normal, predictable interval.  You would begin to time your sentences with little pauses with the rest of the lighthouse crew so you would talk like this while making your………..HORN…………. tea and then carry on talking because you knew when it would go off.  It rattled the walls and the dishes in our cabinet.

At least one girl had died there. They kept photos of her everywhere “in honor of her sacrifice” because she had decided to take the winter watch alone and died in a storm where bounders the size of mini vans had been lifted out of the ocean and left scattered across the island, to say nothing of the ice chunks.  People weren’t allowed to be alone on the watch after that.

One day a dead moose washed up on shore and it took my entire crew all day but we managed to rig up a line to hang it up to dry because we thought having a moose skeleton in the house would really spice the living room up a bit.  It did.  Weird shit happens when six of you are left alone, like ALONE ALONE, no cell reception, no wifi, just a radio to contact the real world and not a lot of reason to do that.  People don’t go on lighthouse jobs if they want to stay connected, I’ve found.

I WILL calmly and kindly try to help anyone who is afraid of bugs. I will show them my finds, i will explain their importance, i will tell them just how sweet and gentle and friendly they are. And I WILL shoot down any immature loser who believes senseless killing is the only possible response to not liking something.

Get woke. Love bugs.

Still in pursuit, we followed the ball toward a small lake in Motor World that had been earmarked for a fleet of tiny bumper boats for children. The area wasn’t open yet, but the empty boats were being tested and floated on the surface. The ball soared over the grass and smashed into several of them, scattering the others with rippling waves from the impact, which launched some of the boats several feet in the air.

Charlie and Ken waded into the water looking for the hatch. After some difficulty, they got it open. Charlie pulled Frank out by grabbing him under his armpits like a baby. Frank crawled up the bank, coughing and sputtering. He splayed across the grass as we all stared at the ball, which bobbed in the water like it was attached to a fishing lure.

We did not ask for the inspector’s report, nor did we ever hear of one being filed. Ken Bailey returned to Canada. The snow-makers cleared away the PVC. Told to dispose of the Bailey Ball, they rolled it into the woods, where it remained for many years."

Salmon Cycle

Together In the Deep Down

Northern paper wasps (Polistes fuscatus) have been found to process the faces of other wasps as a whole, rather than just a collection of individual parts. This is called holistic processing, and it's the same way humans typically process each other's faces. This has been tested in a couple of other Polistes species and they did not process faces in the same way. This is very cool for Northern paper wasps! But crucially, processing each others' faces this way does not mean they process human faces the same. Recognising one another aids them due to their specific social dynamics, but recognising humans wouldn't present the same evolutionary pressures. In one study, their holistic processsing didn't even extend to another paper wasp species, but recognition of human faces has not been tested in paper wasps so we can't say one way or the other even if it looks unlikely

However, it has been tested in other species! Common yellowjackets (Vespula vulgaris) and Western honeybees (Apis mellifera) were capable of discriminating between human faces (although they had to be taught to do so as they probably don't do so naturally) and it seems they also have some capacity for holistic processing. Nevertheless, I feel like I see paper wasps brought up more often than yellowjackets when this fact comes up

There's a lot that still needs studying on this topic, and what we do have points to some really interesting hymenopteran abilities that are not found in many other animals, but it does frustrate me seeing these things exaggerated and overgeneralised to all wasps/Hymenoptera and then presented as facts when there simply isn't evidence for that yet. I love wasps and I typically see this brought up to endear people to them, which I respect, but spreading misinformation for a 'good cause' is still unhelpful

References

Tibbetts et al. (2021) 'Individual recognition is associated with holistic face processing in Polistes paper wasps in a species-specific way'

Sheehan and Tibbetts (2011) 'Specialized Face Learning Is Associated with Individual Recognition in Paper Wasps'

Avarguès-Weber et al. (2017) 'Recognition of human face images by the free flying wasp Vespula vulgaris'

Dyer, Neumeyer and Chittka (2005) 'Honeybee (Apis mellifera) vision can discriminate between and recognise images of human faces'