WaspAppreciation

One thing that I’ve noticed gets a lot of people hung up on bugs is this idea of foreignness- they aren’t mammalian in design, and for many in personality too. Bugs are weird with their extra legs, alien design and almost unanimal-like… but they aren’t. If you watch an ant build its nest you’ll see it carefully choose wear each grain of sand goes. A beetle walking will look and chose what twigs to crawl on. A spider seeing your shadow will turn to look at you.

Ok, so I live in Japan and have seen these Asian Giant Hornets (called suzumebachi in Japanese) several times while here. I don’t want people to not be wary of them, ESPECIALLY in regards to the environment, but it seems like there’s a lot of fear-mongering and panic about them attacking people going on.

This one here came by while I was taping an ant. It ignored me completely, and if it did notice me, didn’t feel the need to attack. When I saw it, I was very still and waited for it to leave.

I have personally NEVER seen more than one of these guys at once. As far as I know they don’t attack in swarms. I also have never seen or heard of one attacking people randomly. If you see one and it seems aggressive, you should obviously try to get away as calmly and quickly as possible.

I have also seen more of them dead or dying than I have alive— and again, ALWAYS on their own.

Wasps =/= Bees.

Hornets and wasps are predators and eat other insects and meat, that’s why they’re such assholes, they hunters.

All bees are wasps and all hornets are wasps

They are not asshole because they hunt, hunting is as ecologically important as their pollination

Social bees and wasp are more aggressive then the solitary ones because they use that aggression to defend their nest and are both chill when away from the nest unless provoked

I don’t know if anyone has heard of how the Asian giant hornet being spotted in the Washington state area in the U.S. but yeah that’s happening now. 

Currently there are concerns about these wasps decimating already fragile bee populations but luckily they haven’t established yet. There is still a chance we can contain them. 

What I am concerned with right now is how this will impact views on wasps in general. There are so many fearmongery articles about the hornets right now calling them “murder wasps” which is completely unnecessary. They are capable of killing people, but so are honey bees. 

There are displays in the entomology department at my school calling spotted lantern bugs “evil” and “insidious.” Not even exaggerating. It’s kind of disappointing especially from these people who have enough interest in insects that they would study and teach about them for a living. And that is for a hemipteran. Imagine a hymenopteran. 

Obviously we need to fight invasive species. They will do real damage.

But I am going to use this as an opportunity to educate. What exactly is an invasive species? Why are they bad?

An invasive species is a species that is not native to an area that has detrimental effects on the environment where it arrived. This usually happens when they outcompete a native species or if they prey directly on a native species. 

Species evolve when put under pressures in their habitats. Predation and competition are major pressures. To get around these pressures, species go through natural selection for certain traits which give them an advantage, a bonus to their fitness. But other species are also going to go though natural selection to be able to compete with the others. This will keep going. 

For example, the rough-skinned newt became more toxic to stop snakes from eating them. Garter snakes started becoming more resistant to the toxin. As a result the even more toxic newts get selected for, and the more toxin resistant snakes become selected for.  These species will be suited for competing with each other. We call this an “evolutionary arms race.” This is supposed to happen. It keeps species from becoming too prevalent in their populations and using all the recourses. 

So when you bring a species to a new area, and its natural controls are suddenly gone, there is nothing stopping it from taking full advantage of the resources in its newfound home. 

For example, many people released their pet pythons into the Everglades in Florida. These pythons and the mammals that live there never went through the evolutionary arms race together. Therefore, the mammals never evolved traits which would help defend them from the pythons, and nothing there ever evolved to prey on pythons. The pythons found themselves in a place where food was abundant and easy to catch and they have no control on their populations. They are a massive problem for the Everglades, but that doesn’t make the snakes evil.

I can already see a bunch of people on the internet posting pictures of like paper wasps or whatever and asking if they are AGHs. This fear of AGHs is going to sour the already terrible relationship humans have with insects and I just really don’t want to see that happen. If you have doubts it will and I’m worrying about nothing, I sincerely hope you are right. 

Yes, they are predators of honeybees and other insects, but there are plenty of other bugs that are predators, too. It’s a natural thing. And yes, they can kill humans - so can honeybees. There are not many deaths attributed to Asian giant hornets per year where they’re native, and the deaths that do occur often happen when people are stung 10-30 times or more, or are due to allergies. They are also not particularly aggressive unless provoked. You are very unlikely to encounter them and even less likely to be stung, even if they did manage to establish themselves here.

And that is the concern! They’re an invasive species here in the US and could potentially be very destructive if they were able to establish breeding populations. But no worries - not many were spotted (2 or 4? Depending on the source, it seems) and scientists are well aware of the issue and are trying to make sure they’re controlled.

Anyway let’s chill on demonizing wasps any further. Native species are super important and deserve the same respect and positive attention bees have gotten in recent years. And no bug is evil!! Stop making them sound like malicious beasts!!

Thank you and please view a very cute Asian giant hornet:

It’s not a “bum” but the wasps abdomen. Think of it as the equivalent of a human’s torso, we don’t call our abdomen’s bums. Bees and wasps pulsate their abdomen’s aka. abdominal pump, for a number of reasons. The main reason you’d see them do this is for respiration.

Along the abdomen of the wasp are spiracles, which are tiny holes where the air flows into the insect. The pulsating of their abdomen works to pull and push air in and out of their bodies into the air sacs, allowing for rapid exchange of gases rather then just waiting for diffusion which would take alot longer. Think of it like an accordion.