I am smart enough to not challenge wasps. I've always had a deep respect for their ability to cause pain when they sting. There have been people I have known who did not share this deep respect for wasps and their ability to inflict many painful stings in seconds. These people also paid the price. A friend's son learned a painful lesson about being encouraged by his college buddies after a night of drinking to take a baseball bat to a wasp nest. This was not a good idea. The wasps really took issue with a drunk college student bashing their home with a baseball bat. Since wasps have no real legal recourse, they did what most wasps, bees and other insects with stingers would do when their home is threatened by a bat-wielding college student who is intoxicated, they attacked. This young man had so many wasp stings he had to go to the hospital. I understand the wasps living in the field simply rebuilt their home and did things wasps do every day. It appears that scientists have shown that wasps have an ability to use logic at a level similar to humans. I wonder if this means we may have to worry about a drunken college wasp trying to bash our homes with a baseball bat? I'd settle for a warning sign signed by the logic thinking wasps explaining how all drunken college students with a baseball bat will be stung on site with no questions asked.
Below are excerpts from
the story with my valuable insights in italics.
Elizabeth Tibbetts, an
evolutionary biologist at the University of Michigan has found
evidence that the paper wasp may be capable of a logical
reasoning used to make inferences.
Is it possible this
could lead to future movies from Hollywood called Night of the Wasp?
There are already some good movies involving wasps like Wasp Woman,
Swarmed as well as Dragon Wasps and others. I purpose a new movie
involving logical wasps that try and organize their colony into a
fighting machine. This would involve politics and the wasp colony is
ultimately destroyed because of political battles and letting their
natural enemy, the beetle, to take up residence in their hive because
some wasps want peace at any cost. I believe this has potential.
The nervous system found
in paper wasps is roughly the same size as those in honeybees yet
they demonstrate a complex social behavior that is not seen in
honeybee colonies.
Who knew that wasps had
complex social behaviors. I wonder if there are wasp parents who sit
around and worry about their wasp children. Is there a wasp home
where they put their elderly? I'm sure wasp elections can get pretty
intense. At the end of a wasp concert, do the wasps put their
stingers in the air so the wasp band will play another song? Of
course, we don't want to think about the dark side of wasp society,
such as organize wasp crime or wasp hookers. Maybe there are some
people who like thinking about such things, but I am not one of them.
I do believe it could make for an interesting series on cable
television.
In the laboratory,
Tibbetts and her colleagues trained wasps to discriminate between
pairs of colors by associating one color with a mild electric shock.
Tibbetts said the wasps were able to quickly and accurately learn the
premise pairs.
Well, it is good to
know that wasps also have an aversion to pain. This laboratory
experiment could cause generations of wasps to experience trauma when
faced with certain colors.
“Why don't you stink
that drunken college kid with the baseball bat.'
“He's wearing green.”
“So?”
“You know they put
enough electricity in me during that lab experiment to light up a
city block. They did it so I would avoid the color green. That guy
has on a green coat.
“I'll go sting him,
but I am worried.”
“Why?”
“With his blood
alcohol level, I'm going to be pretty drunk before this is all over.”
“Oh.”
The Paper wasps may have
been able to succeed where the bees failed thanks to a different type
of cognitive ability that allows them to display different social
behaviors. Tibbetts noted that the wasps appeared to use known
relationships to make inferences about unknown relationships.
Does this mean there is
a wasp social network where they tell one another to avoid the
laboratory where you get zapped for seeing different colors? Is it
possible there is some wise old wasp telling the story of how one day
long ago he and his friends had to sting some stupid drunk college
kid with a baseball bat and had him running for this life? This may
only take place during the wasp holidays after they've stung some
drunk people and are feeling pretty relaxed. I'm sure the social
behaviors of wasps could also involve complaining about relatives and
how some wasp family members sting too many drunk people and may have
a problem. I think this has all the elements of a successful
Hollywood movie called “It's a Wasp's Life.”
Below is a link to the
story.
https://www.newsmax.com/thewire/wasps-humans-logical-reasoning/2019/05/08/id/915072/
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