Murder hornets

IdleRich

IdleRich
These are "just" Japanese giant hornets rebranded aren't they?
If I remember my nature documentaries correctly they find a beehive and then go and get their mates and come back and kill every single bee in the hive by chopping their heads off one by one as they fly out. The only possible defence for the hive is to kill the first one so he can't take the message... Japanese bees have figured that out and so they surround the scout and agitate themselves until the temperature rises - cos they can survive a couple of degrees hotter than the temp which kills the hornet - but European and US hives transplanted to Japan don't know this so they're totally vulnerable. And now if they're in the US. They're not venomous as such but I guess that if enough of them sting someone at once it can shock the system enough to kill.
Still you already have the tarantula hawk wasp don't you? That's scary to me.

Tarantula hawk wasps are relatively docile and rarely sting without provocation. However, the sting?particularly that of P. grossa?is among the most painful of all insects, though the intense pain only lasts about five minutes. One researcher described the pain as "...immediate, excruciating, unrelenting pain that simply shuts down one's ability to do anything, except scream. Mental discipline simply does not work in these situations."In terms of scale, the wasp's sting is rated near the top of the Schmidt sting pain index, second only to that of the bullet ant, and is described by Schmidt as "blinding, fierce[, and] shockingly electric". Because of their extremely large stingers, very few animals are able to eat them; one of the few that can is the roadrunner.
 

droid

Well-known member
Big fan of these sting videos. I have a friend who is semi-phobic and Ive had great fun putting these on at opportune moments.


Its worth watching them in order.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Oh yeah when they build up to the tarantula wasp and then finally a bullet ant, the most painful sting in the insect world. But isn't there a tribe in the Amazon or something where on reaching adulthood they have to thrust their arm into a whole nest of them and get stung hundreds of times?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I think what this shows is that hunter-gatherer societies have independently converged on a phenomenon that, in Western culture, has manifested as Jackass, Dirty Sanchez, I'm A Celebrity etc. etc.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Apparently when girlfriend was in France last month (she just told me this) she went to a bbq in Brittany and while they were there the neighbour called a pest control guy to get rid of what he thought was a wasp's nest in his garden - but the pest controller came round to tell them that it had turned out to be - well, you guessed it - a murder hornet nest (I think he opted for the more sober asian hornets though)
 
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