Happy Thought for 11 August 2023

Have a Happy Thought:

 

While some wasps strike terror into the heart of a summertime barbeque, we should be happy that most species of wasps exist.

Because of the 103,000 species of wasps in the world (yes you read that right), the vast majority don’t want to bother humans.

In fact, most wasps will actually “help” humans… by pollinating plants that we eat or like to look at…

And also by controlling other insect species.

 

Often by parasitising those other species. I’m not going to go into that in much detail, but you’re welcome to look into it.

Just remember that even Charles Darwin, famously delighted by the myriad ways that life developed on Earth, was seriously put off by parasitoid wasps, writing:

         “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [a family of parasitoid wasps] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.”1

 

On a much weirder note, wasps actually form some of the tiniest animals on earth.

How tiny, you ask? How about the size of an amoeba?

Fairy wasp (Megaphragma mymaripenne), a Paramecium and an amoeba at the same scale.

 

The ridiculous thing is that the fairy wasp

  1. Can live up to five days as an adult (longer than many wasps or insects you might normally see and know about)
  2. Still have all the regular innards that most insects do
  3. Have brains that shouldn’t work, but do2
  4. Aren’t even the smallest insect – there are two other species that are even smaller!3

 

More importantly, if you are at a summer barbeque or picnic, and a standard-sized (or even a fairly large) wasp comes looking for food, here’s what the experts say to do:

  • Set out some of your meat as a sacrificial offering, at the other end of the table
  • Maybe put something sweet over there, too
  • Cover the rest of your food with some netting to make it less interesting than the obviously available food you’ve just sacrificed

That way the female wasps raising young can grab some protein, without bothering you, and any adult wasp can grab a quick snack without having to fight you for it.4

 

1 https://www.darwintreeoflife.org/news_item/parasitoid-wasps-indispensable-insects-you-never-think-about-or-never-want-to/

2 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1467803911000946?via%3Dihub

3 https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/how-tiny-wasps-cope-with-being-smaller-than-amoebas

4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001np29

 

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