Wasps: Not as cute as bees

Wasps have a bad rap. Because their sting really hurts and they don't make honey like their cousins. But they are super cool and you shouldn't kill them. Listen and learn!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's us and we're here to talk to
you about get this our book. We have a Stuff
you Should Know book coming out this November and you're
going to love it, and you can preorder it now.
That's try it. It's called Stuff you Should Know Collen,
an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things, and it's been
a lot of fun to work on and we're really,

(00:20):
I mean genuinely excited about how this thing has come together. Yep.
It's twenties six chunky Harry chapters that are just going
to knock your socks clean off. And yes, Chuck, we
are indeed proud of this book. It is truly, indubitably
the first Stuff you Should note book and it's coming
out this November and you can order it now, pre
order everywhere you get books, So do that, and we

(00:42):
thank you in advance. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, Jerry's out there somewhere which makes this Stuff
you should ass Oh yeah, old school insect a dish

(01:06):
from Robert Lamb. I know it's it's got mouth parts
in it, but it's no Tracy Wilson joint, but it's
still good. It's super charming. It starts Robert starts this
article out from the perspective of a spider who has
been dragged into a wasps nest and is about to
be eaten alive by a wasp larva. It's pretty interesting.

(01:31):
So it's a good article, I guess, is what I'm
trying to say. And if you are not familiar with
Robert Lamb, then friends, you are missing out on not one,
but two, no three, really great podcast that that guy
has put out. Um, what is it? Stuff to blow
your mind? Of course, the the stalwart science tech, well
that tech sort of science plus show. Yes, yeah, yeah,

(01:52):
in depth like super deep rabbit hole interesting stuff. And
then um uh he did one called trans Human. Yeah,
that's a action scripted sci fi very cool. Yeah. And
then also he and Joe who he does stuff to
blow your mind with, also do Invention too, which is
kind of in depth rabbit whole thing about invention. So

(02:13):
check all those out, everybody. Yeah, it was fun to
kind of get back to basics with a nice little
insect cast on wasps and dude, I went outside today
on my side deck to let the dogs out, and
low and behold, I looked what I was? You said,
who let the dogs out? Sorry, you said let the

(02:34):
dogs out? So I had to. I thought I had.
I thought you were saying wait, wait wait, No, no,
I was saying, woo woo woo woo. Oh boy, there
was a waspiness on the ground. Okay, good, all right,
that's sorry. Did I I knocked the legs out from
under that story? It's just a wasp nest. But it
was you know, the timing was alive. Oh I didn't

(02:55):
poke it to see it. It was. It was not attached.
I think it had fallen. So my guess is that
it did not have any more wasps residing in it. Man,
that's gotta be a real letdown, because it's the middle
of summer right now, so they're they're wanting to like grow.
There was probably larva in there. Yeah, that's that's really weird.

(03:15):
They must have abandoned it then, Yeah, and wasps are
you know. I think, you know, everyone loves the bees
now because they should because bees are awesome and bees
produce honey, and we want bees to stick around. But
I think wasps and hornets, which are a type of
wasps uh are still just so maligned, and they're the

(03:38):
ones that people will reach for their can of raid
to spray and no qualm. Yeah, and you shouldn't. Don't
do it. Let the wasp live. I'll go ahead and
say it. Now, we're gonna say a bunch, but let
him live. Totally chuck, thank you. Yeah, we're here to
open everyone's eyes to the function and purpose of wasps existence.
They're not like mosquitoes. Remember in the Mosquitoes episode, we

(03:59):
basically can aluded that there's no reason for mosquitoes around
and they just are terrible. Um. Wasps are not like that.
And I think Robert does a really good job basically
pinning down why wasps get such a bad rap. One
is that there stings peck such a wallop compared to
other stinging insects. And we'll talk about their there's stings

(04:21):
in the venom that goes along with it um, which
is so okay, that's fair, Like nobody wants to be
stung by a wasp. It's really it can ruin your day. Um.
And then also the other thing is is that the
if you pay attention to wasps, you realize that they
live these really brutal, grizzled existences. Their their predators, and

(04:42):
in fact, in their habitats they're apex predators. They're like
sharks and lions, but for the bugs and um, sometimes
small animals that live around there. Like, I didn't watch
any of the videos that I could have because I'm
just really over animal death, even if it's nature. Um, yeah,
I was when I was doing the End of the

(05:05):
World with Josh Clark, Like I went into it just
feeling fine about that. That's just nature, that's the way
things work. And then one of the guys I talked
to is David Pierce, who you and I talked to
actually first in our super Stuff Guide to Happiness, but
I went back and interviewed him, and his whole jam
is like we could actually eventually engineer the biosphere so

(05:28):
that there isn't any suffering among animals, and like what
we take is natural isn't necessarily have to be that way.
And it's really changed how I view like violence, even
among animals. So anyway, the upshot is I didn't watch
any videos, but one of the ones that I saw,
the title was wasp kills baby bird. So that video

(05:48):
is out there if you want to see that, but
I just can't. I don't. I don't like to see
that stuff anymore, you know. I mean I didn't really
like enjoy it before, but now it just downright bothers me. Yeah,
I get it. That's I live with a person who
can't watch anything like that, so I get it. Yeah.
So there are more than twenty thousand species of wasp.

(06:09):
And like I said, hornets are a kind of wasp.
So if you here, I mean you would call a
hornet a hornet, but you can't necessarily use them interchangeably.
But a hornet is a wasp. And uh, there's a
lot of you know, over that twenty thou species. There
are a lot of different kinds and a lot of
variety as far as what they look like and what

(06:29):
they're shaped like, and what color they are and how
they like to live their life. But as with every
insect cast, we're gonna go over those body parts and
mouth parts is in there somewhere, and it starts with exoskeleton,
just like all the little insect buddies have that kitan exoskeleton,
and in the case of the wasp. They are very

(06:51):
segmented out. They have three segments. They get your head,
which has got those uh antenna, the sensory antenna. You
have those mouth parts because they lick and they bite,
and then you have the very cool looking compound eyes
and simple eyes, these sort of kidney shaped eyes of

(07:12):
a wasp that are very sort of signature. Where are
they known as in your Italian accent? Oh? Silly? So
if in the Italian if a vowel follows a C, yeah,
it makes a chest sound. If a C is followed
by an H, it makes a cuss sound. So is
this really pronounce Acelli? Yeah? Okay, I think in in

(07:36):
like among biologists they probably say oh sally. But since
you were doing the accent, sure, I wanted to set
you up for a lesson in its appreciate that. Um. Okay,
So you've got the head, has some eyes, also has
a brain chuck um, which I saw. Supposedly, wasps are
among the smarter insects out there. They can recognize each

(07:56):
other by face by facial markings. Did you know that
they Steve? Are you doing sting anyone? I'm doing okay, Ted?
Thanks for asking. It just killed the baby bird. Some
weirdo was was filming it and put it on the internet. Well, actually,
Steve would say, no, I didn't sting anyone because I'm
a man and I don't sting. Uh oh yeah, that's

(08:17):
a really great point, chuck um, which we'll talk more
about later. You'd find the stinger in the abdomen, which
is the third part, the lowest part of the wasp body,
but only in a female, which I think this is
true for for bees too, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah,
I don't remember. We've done a lot of good beat stuff. Uh.
And then in between those things you've got the thorax,

(08:38):
which has the six little legs and then those those
really quick flapping wings. Yeah so um. And in between
the thorax and the abdomen you have a very narrow waste,
which usually is what gives away a wasp. You can
look at it and be like, that's a wasp. Um.
It's like it's got a corset on. Unless it's a hornet.
Hornets are much chunkier, more road ton yah um. But

(09:01):
they are, like you said, a kind of wasp um.
And actually I think the genus that um hornets fall
under is called Vespa. And vespa in Italian means wasp,
So hornets are wasps in Italian. Okay, okay, So I

(09:23):
think one of the coolest thing about the wasp is
the history and the evolution of this thing um along
with some pretty horrific stuff that's gonna follow. But about
in the Cretaceous period about a hundred million years ago,
you had to kind of take a snapshot of planet
Earth to understand how the wasp forms. And back then

(09:44):
they didn't have all these flowering plants that like we
have now. There were a lot of conifers, and these
evergreens depended on the wind to spread their seat around.
They weren't counting on the insects to do this kind
of thing at this point. And uh and we should
also mention that ants are a cousin of the wasp,
which makes sense. They look kind of ant like. Yeah,

(10:05):
I think they finally figured out that ants um evolved
out of mud daubers. They're their closest relative, which kind
of makes sense. I think they have some ant like behavior. Yeah,
and like, uh so the age of the during the
Cretaceous period, these wasps were carnivores and they preyed on spiders,

(10:26):
and other insects, and as plants started to evolve, they
realized that, hey, there's a lot of insects flying around
going back and forth, like we're just using the wind
to carry our seed around. Why don't we Why don't
we get these insects to work for us basically, and
they can do the job. Yeah. So that was the

(10:48):
rise of the angiosperms um, which is you know, whenever
you think of a flower that the bee visits and
moves from place to place carrying pollen, that's what an
angiosperm is um. Rather than having to just depend on
the wind, you can depend on the insects. And so eventually,
over time, these wasps, these early predators that used to

(11:10):
um feed exclusively on other insects, said well, you know
what this this whole nectar thing and the pollen thing,
I can get with this. So they started to change
their diet from um insects to pollen and nectar. But
the weird thing is is rather than developing a way
to feed their young from pollen and nectar like honey bees,

(11:31):
which I think is another reason people like bees and
don't really realize is it realize it is that um
they're little vegetarian, vegan animals. You know, they don't hurt anybody.
They'll they'll defend themselves, but they don't want to go
hurt anybody. They're very peaceful. Wasps are not like that

(11:51):
because even though they generally most species of wasps adults
eat nectar and pollen, they still kill other insects to
drag back to their nest to feed their young, to
raise their young on. So wasps are technically omnivores at
the beginning of their life their carnivores, and then later
in life they grow into herbivores. Yeah, isn't that amazing?

(12:12):
It is. Wasps are way more amazing than I realized.
Should we take a break and talk about their stinger Yes,
all right, we'll be right back for stinger talk. H

(12:42):
all right, welcome to stinger talk. I'm Chuck, I'm Josh,
I'm waiting. No, I'm Ted. I guess it makes me Steve. Yeah, uh,
washed stings are tough. Um, you kind of mentioned early on.
It's you know, you get a yellow jacket and that
that's that doesn't feel great. And obviously we're talking about

(13:04):
if you're non allergic, and it's not like a legitimate
threat to your health, and it's just the pain of
the sting that we're rating here. Yellow jacket sting isn't great,
but a washting and a hornet sting is really something else.
It's I feel like it. It hurts more and for longer,
and for good reason, because it actually does. Um like

(13:24):
b venom is its own thing, shares a lot in
common with wasp venom. Wasp venom seems to be this
extraordinarily highly developed, like biological weapon, that is, this cocktail
of different kinds of compounds that all come together to
produce a horrible pain sensation that lasts longer and has

(13:49):
a greater impact on your body than anything the actual
sting produces. And that's apparently the whole reason behind it
is it makes the wasp seem way less vulnerable than
they actually are. It seems like they're way more powerful,
and for all intents and purposes, they are. But like
if you if you could take the venom out of

(14:09):
the sting, the sting would would do basically nothing to you.
But because that the venom is introduced by that sting,
that venom is so potent. It's like one of the
worst things in the world to get stung by a wasp. Yeah,
and the actual stinger itself was It has a pretty
remarkable evolutionary story. Uh So, here's what happens. In the
prehistoric times. This parasitic wasp would use this ovipositor that's

(14:34):
actually you know, the egg laying organ. They would use
this pointy thing to lay the egg on a living insect,
Like they would lay the egg on the caterpillar. Then
these little larvae would hatch out and then they would
eat that caterpillar. The larvae would so at some point,
as things are evolving along, Mother Nature says, you know,
it would be even better than this is if you

(14:55):
could saw open that caterpillar with this ovipause it or
and lay eggs inside of this thing. And that's exactly
what happened, right, um, which made a lot of sense.
And I think there's a lot of um wasp species,
there's at least some that still do this, Like rather
than build a nest, they just go find an insect

(15:16):
host and lay some eggs on it or lay some
eggs in it and then just let the larvae eat
the eat the inside out. But um, most I think
have evolved to kind of use some different techniques, which
we'll talk about in a little bit, But the stinger
itself stuck around even after it stopped being used to
actually deposit eggs into the insects directly. That's right. Uh.

(15:40):
And you talked about the venom that's obviously produced in
the venom gland stored in a little venom sack, a
little bur lapsack inside the wasp body, and then it
seeps out. It's got it. It's a barbedlous stinger. It's
just like a straight, little pointy thing, but it seeps
out through these little valves and coats the entire stinger.
And so they store this stinger inside of a sheath

(16:02):
and are always kind of ready to use it. And
you know, like we said, it's only the females because
it was an ovipositor. But the males can pretend like
like they'll rear their little butt your way and say
stay away from me. You don't know if I'm a
male or female. Right, you don't want to look too closely, right, right,
Which is just hilarious, But it also didn't that show
like a certain level of intelligence as well. I think so,

(16:25):
or at the very least, there's too bluff some Yeah,
the bluff, you know, that's that takes intelligence, um, which
is I think another another indicator that wasps are amazing. Yeah,
And like you sort of hinted at the reason this
venom is so powerful is has as has a couple
of functions. Is one is just the simple function of

(16:47):
paralyzing those insects, and the other is as a defense,
Like it's it's meant to sting something much much larger
and have that thing hurt so bad that it thinks
it's hurt a lot worse than it is and like
just wants to get out of there basically, right. And
then that combined with um, they're very usually very bright

(17:09):
colorings because you know, usually the more colorful an animal is,
the more toxic. It is just kind of a universal
symbol in nature to just steer clear. Um, And hornets
and wasps typically are fairly colorful as far as insects go.
So those two things combined can teach a larger animal
pretty quickly to just leave them alone. And that's kind

(17:31):
of how how wasps have have made it this long.
I mean they've been around for more than a hundred
million years. You know, Um, that's a pretty successful species.
Or family of insects. Yeah, and that includes humans. Obviously.
If you go poking around a hornets nest or washing
nest and you get stung, you're not going to finish
the job. You know, You're probably just gonna get out

(17:52):
of there. Yeah. Yeah, hopefully you can learn your lesson
that first time, you know, or maybe you don't even
have to learn it directly, you can just know to
stay away from the wah. So what's in that venom?
Some really good stuff. I actually found even more stuff
than Robert included here. There's some peptides and some enzymes um.

(18:13):
Some of the enzymes include fosseh full pace A and
B fosse follow pace am bi um and these actually
break down the membrane and lipid um coating of cells
in your body to basically spill their guts into your
blood stream, and that includes neurons. Neural cells can be

(18:35):
spilled into your blood stream when they encounter this peptide,
which sends a excruciating pain um notification to your brain
saying alert Alert, you're in a tremendous amount of pain.
That's just like step one. Yeah. They also have nora
and effort in there, which stops the blood flow temporarily.

(18:58):
And that's why I like that when said it feels
like it lasts longer. I feel like that's the Nora
epern nor Eperneffer network because it just sort of sits
in one place and eventually the bloodstream is going to
kind of dilude it away, but it kind of hangs
out there for a little while. Yeah, that's just mean. Um.
There's also a setyal coline, which actually goes to your

(19:20):
pain receptors and stimulates them, right. And there's also histamines um.
And histamines are released by your body. They're they're responsible
for the inflammatory response, but they also um. The the
venom in a wasps venom as includes histamines directly to

(19:40):
just to make sure that it gets that inflammation good
and good and primed. Yeah. And then there's I was
hoping you would take this part because of that word.
You want to try it high Laurona days. Well, I
use hyaluronic acid under my eyes, So what's that. It's like, Uh,

(20:01):
it's an acid. Um, I don't know, I think for
bags and it's generally keep yeah yeah, yeah, just to
keep your eyes looking sharp. I noticed your eyes look
always look so sharp. I thought I thought you'd notice eventually, So, uh,
that thing that you just talked about, and then something

(20:21):
a day m c d P mass cell degranulating peptide.
This stuff actually melts through the connective tissue between cells
and basically just sort of it destroys those membranes and
allows the venom to move a little more freely than
it would ordinarily. Yeah, and the the mass cell degranulating

(20:42):
peptide degranulating means that it basically goes to your mass
cells and squeezes the histamines out of them. So not
only does it contain histamines already, and not only does
it trigger a histamine response or release, it goes and
gets it out of the cells that normally carry your
around in your in your immune system. Um, so it's

(21:03):
just really mean nasty stuff. One of the other things
I saw that they've just started to kind of um
pay attention to is called Brady Brady kinnan and it's
associated with chronic pain. So on top of acute pain production,
they're like, how about a little dose of what it
feels like they have chronic pain too in the mix
of all of this stuff. And then Chuck tell me,

(21:26):
this is an astounding I got a couple more. One
thing is just called antigen five, which is as cryptic
as it comes. They don't know exactly what role it plays,
but they know it's a very powerful allergen. And then
there's a couple of peptides that are antimicrobial, which prevent
the wasp from contracting an infection from a prey that

(21:46):
it's puts its stinger in. Wow. Yeah, and then amazing,
like this is some amazing stuff. Yeah, and I didn't see.
I saw that hornets can staying again and again and again,
but I don't know about the wasp in general. Is
that the case? Yes, definitely, because the hornet is just
a type of what so you've got like mud daubers.

(22:08):
The kind of wasp hornet is a kind of wasp,
And there's like many types of hornets, but they're all wasps,
that's right, you know. So, yeah, they can sting again
and again and again, which apparently is another reason why
they're sting. Hurts so bad. They can do this to
you and inject this venom into you. I saw one
expert interviewed on a different house Stuff Works article that said,

(22:30):
in average of ten times, like if you get stung
by wasp, usually you're gonna get stung more than once,
and it can be ten times, I guess on average.
I don't know if they just pull that out of
the air, but they were a wasp expert, so hopefully not. Well,
you know, there's murder hornets that are making the news
these days in the States. Those things can kill small
rodents with a full charge of a sting. Right the

(22:54):
Asian giant hornet, which they found I think I think
three of them in the Pacific north West that they
thought they got rid of last year, but it turns
out they survived the winter a queen did. And um,
you know, they call the murder hornets because they kill
bees and those I didn't know this it was a
big because it was just sort of a backpage thing,

(23:15):
But in two thousand sixteen, a package of murder hornets
was intercepted at San Francisco International Airport and they destroyed
that so it didn't become a thing. But they're a
real threat to be so that's why people are sort
of writing about murder hornets now invading as an invasive
species here in the US. Yeah, And I mean like

(23:37):
it's really doing an injustice to the hornets unfortunately, because
calling a murder hornets, like if you read some of
the articles on it, like people will say outright like, oh,
they'll they can kill people very easily, and that's just
absolutely not true, um, and it makes it sound like
they're a threat to humans. Like you said, the big
threat is to honey bees, and specifically it's to European

(23:59):
honey bees because they haven't evolved around um, murder hornets
or Asian giant hornets. Asian honey bees have and they
actually have a defense to where when um, the giant
hornets show up, like you're saying, they just like murder
hornet is a good term if you're a honey bee,
because just a few of them showing up at a

(24:20):
hive can just destroy a colony in a few hours,
and they do it in a really brutal way. They
like they decapitate the bees and just kill an entire
colony in a few hours. And they do it because
they're one of the few species that that um. They're omnivorous,
but most of their food comes from meat. They're mostly carnivores,

(24:42):
so they're eating all these bees. Basically, they they just
carry your baby right off out of its crib um.
But they can wipe out a whole colony like this
if they run into a Asian honeybee colony. Those bees
have developed a response where they'll swarm around one of
the Asian giant hornets and they'll flap their wings a

(25:04):
bunch and generate heat and they'll cook the hornet alive
inside the swarm that was. That's their defense. European honey bees,
which make up a lot of the honey bees, most
of the honey bees in the United States, they don't
have that defense. So it's a big problem. If the
Asian giant hornet gets a foothold here, Yeah, and it
will pack a lot more of a punch to um.

(25:24):
They have about seven times uh potency as a honey
bees venom. And as far as the pain scale, they
likened it getting stung by an murder hornet is they
likened it to like between three and ten, Like if
you were to be stung by three to ten yellow
jackets all at once. So awful because the yellow jackets

(25:47):
thing is nothing to sneeze at either. That's kind of
wasp you know. Yeah, I don't get I haven't been
stung in a long long time, knock would knock on wood.
I got stung a couple of summers ago. I'm not
allergic or anything, but you know my story, I told
it back with the B thing was when I was
hiking that time and I got tagged eleven times in
the face and neck when I stumbled. It was one

(26:08):
of those underground hives that I just walked over, and
you know, you see two or three bees, You're like, oh,
what's going on? Then you see tin and then all
of a sudden that they're everywhere and you're just running
like a moron through the woods toward the river basically.
But yeah, I got hit eleven times, and uh, you

(26:29):
know that could have killed me if I was allergic
out in the middle of nowhere like that. Sure, I
thought you were allergic, so we just lied on the
episode of Ye. Yeah, it was painful that there was
one I think that got the deepest on my eyebrow bone,
my orbital bone, and it went straight through and I
could I could almost feel it all my bone, and

(26:51):
that's the one like A had a hard time getting
it out. It was so embedded and it felt like
somebody and I know I used the same analogy back then,
But it felt like somebody had a tiny little you know,
little nails you hang pictures with. I felt like somebody
had that poking that bone and they were just tapping
it with a hammer in this like regular beat. It

(27:13):
is awful. It's terrible. Man alive. Yeah, it sounds like
you stepped on a yellow jacket nest because they nest
in the ground and they follow you to like they
were gonna until I got you going. Huh. I think
we should take a break maybe and talk about nesting
right after this. Yeah, m hm, okay, chuck. So we're

(27:56):
moving on from venom. I think we made our point.
Venom from wash is pretty serious. Um, And if you
want to avoid getting injected with venom from wasps, you
want to learn to know what a wasp nest looks
like so you can avoid the wasp nest altogether. Because
some wasps are more aggressive than others, and if you

(28:17):
get anywhere near their nest, they're gonna be like, let
me just give you a little lesson about getting close
to my nest, and they'll stay sting you right if
you want to get away. So the um kinds of
nests that you see um hanging from trees. That's a
kind of wasp nest. That's paper wasp nest um. There's
mud dauber nests. There's nests in the ground that are

(28:41):
yellow jacket nests. Wasps make a bunch of different kinds
of nests, and for you to survive in the world,
you have to know what each one looks like and
be able to sense them out with your your nose. Yeah.
When I think of of wasp nest and Georgia, at least,
I think of that honeycomb style where it's just a
bunch of little tiny holes and it looks like it's

(29:03):
made out of paper, because it kind of is in
a way. Yeah, I think those are bald faced um
hornets or wasps, I can't remember which one. The wasps,
and they actually chew up would fragments that they'll get from,
say like your deck or if your kid only has
those old timey wood toys, they might chew those up

(29:23):
if they're in the yard. And then they take that
and turn it into actual pulp like paper, and they
spit it out and make a basically a paper mache nest,
which is pretty impressive. But that's why those things look
like their paper mache because they basically are yeah, and
they're light like paper machee. Um, and they're fairly intricate
if you look at them. They have some of them

(29:44):
have what looks like a little roof eaves. Um. They
can be there, like I said, super light, so they
can be dangling from a really small sort of thread like, uh,
I don't even know what you would call it, just
a thread. Yeah, it's sort of like thread. I guess
suspension cable. Yeah, suspension cable exactly. We'll go with that

(30:05):
because it sounds like it's a little stirredier. Although is
that the kind that you found in your yard today? Yeah?
I found let the dogs out. Yeah, I found one
of those, uh, laying on the ground when I was
a kid. You know, the big hornets nest that are
the big sort of um. Also sort of looks like
paper machee, but it's more gray and it doesn't have
the little holes. It's just got one central entry point

(30:28):
and it's about as big as a football. Yeah. Those
were sort of like country decor. Did you ever know
anyone who had one of those in the house? Yes, murderers,
serial killers, So we had one. My dad climbed up
a tree to get one of these. It was emptied,
thank goodness. Uh. And we had that thing, you know,
mounted on a log above our fireplace for years. Really. Yeah,

(30:50):
it was weird, that fascinating. Yeah, I don't remember which
kind that is. And I mean, I've looked at so
much stuff about wasting. I think it was the white
faced hornet if I'm not mistaken. Okay, is that who
it is? All right? You can get pretty big in there. Yes,
and they're big, um, the like you said, the size
of a football. Their nests can get pretty big. Um.

(31:12):
But yeah, they that's a good one to avoid. I
didn't realize that they were aggressive. Huh. Yeah, you don't
want to mess around with one of those nests. You
don't want to go poking it. From what I saw,
the mud daubers, which actually make theirs out of mud.
They're the ones that you know, those tubes that usually
come down from like the ceiling, down the wall. Those
are actually mud tubes that the mud dauber has made.

(31:33):
And mud daubers, we should say, they're basically two kinds
of wasps in the world. Wasps and hornets, social and
solitary and solitary is exactly what it sounds like. They
it's just a single wasp of female living on her own. Um.
She'll mate with some male wasp and then go off
make her own nest, either burrowing into the ground or

(31:54):
if she's a mud daubers, she'll make a mud nest.
So when you see a mud daubers nest, like stop
and be like, I respect that because that was made
by one single wasp on her own with zero help whatsoever.
She made that nest um, which I just find extremely impressive,
by chewing up mud and just slowly but surely building it,

(32:15):
spinning mud out onto the wall. Yeah, and if you're
a social wasp, you are. It's sort of be like
and that they're working for the queen. Um maybe more
than one queen even, But you have these male drones
that are there to mate, and you have these female
workers who build the nest and they hunt for food
and tend to these little larvae. But it's basically all

(32:37):
about getting the queen to live through the winter to
the next season. Um. Like, they will all leave the nest,
and I think I think the queen is the only
thing that overwinters, Isn't that right, yeah, yeah, the queen. Yeah.
If they raised queen larvae um, the queen will will
live until the next winter and start over again, basically

(32:57):
creating eggs of sterile female workers to help her to
hatch and then help her build up the hive, raise
um male drones or now is the drone the worker,
No drones, the male that's just used for reproduction, right, um,
and then eventually raise little queens UM. So it's pretty
pretty interesting, especially as far as like social insects go.

(33:20):
There are very few species of um social wasps and hornets,
but the ones they are that are pretty they're they're
highly social. Even among like social insects, they have pretty
intricate complex societies like UM. Some of these the social
wasp nests I think UM, including yellow jackets, will have

(33:42):
multiple queens and there's one head queen who has basically
beaten up other queens to establish her dominance, and then
she'll have the most eggs, and then the next layer
down will have the second most eggs, and so on
and so forth. And that takes like a certain amount
of cooperation to maintain and respect that type of hierarchy,

(34:03):
to keep that society functioning the way it should, especially
considering you have to to reinvent the wheel every year
after winter comes and goes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, uh. And
they talk to each other too, in a way. They communicate,
especially if there's a threat via pheromones. So that's why
you were more likely to get swarmed rather than just

(34:25):
like if you're an actual threat to a to a nest,
they can send a signal that says, hey, everybody, this
jerk over here has gotta This kid has got a
stick and he's coming at us. Let's get him. And
if they if they die, actually they release that. It's
like a byproduct of their death is releasing that same pheromone.
Basically they turned into like Harry Dean Stanton in Red

(34:46):
Dawn where they're like, avenge me. Uh, I guess I
have that one written. I guess you didn't see the
video then of the the tarantula hawk, since you're not, no,
but I've seen one in person. Actually, yeah. The pepsis
wasp is known as the tarantula hawk because they lay

(35:08):
eggs inside of a paralyzed tarantula and the larvae eat
the tarantula from the inside out. And I was like,
I gotta, I gotta see this, and of course on
YouTube there is a pepsis wasp battling it out with
a tarantula and it's no match. Uh, and it paralyzes
this tarantula and drags him back like a great distance. Yeah,

(35:33):
one thing pulling this tarantula across the ground, but which
is much much, much larger. But the tarantula, like you said,
it is no match. And even among humans, I think
that tarantula hawks um sting is like a four out
of four on the Schmidt pain scale, Like it's as
bad as it gets. Because you know, why don't They

(35:53):
asked Mr Schmidt, how bad is it hurt? And he's like,
oh my gosh, it's terrible, he said, yeah, um, but yes.
And they're very bright blue and orange too, which is
another another indicator, like stay away. If you see anything
it's really colorful, just assume it can it can mess
you up pretty good. Don't like tantula hawk. That's the

(36:13):
kids don't like that colorful frog. So but even if
they even if it's not a wasp taking down a
tarantula and laying eggs inside it that eat the tarantula
from the inside out. Um, almost all wasp species, if
not add percent of wash species. Um. They like we said,
they raised their young by by paralyzing other insects, dragging

(36:35):
them to their nest, and laying the eggs nearby, leaving
the bug to be paralyzed and still alive. When the
egg hatches, and larva crawls over and starts eating that
bug alive. And this is one reason why wasps have
such a bad rap, because it's just such a brutal
circle of life. It really is, yeah, especially from the
perspective of the insect. And apparently Charles Darwin said, um,

(36:58):
when he witnessed this happening to a cute little caterpillar,
that it made it difficult for him to believe in
an omnipresent and beneficent God, because what kind of God
would allow a poor, acute little caterpillar to do that.
The thing is that Charles Darwin, I mean, he liked
to puts around in the garden, but he was not
a farmer. If you're a farmer, you're probably kind of

(37:20):
happy to see a wasp larva eating a caterpillar, because
caterpillars eat your crops. And if you ask me, Um,
this is where we get to the part about the
roles that lost playing in the ecosystem, and why you
shouldn't just go willy nilly killing them. Yeah, I mean
they'll bring in wasps. Farmers well sometimes if they have
like a insect issue, because the wasp is going to

(37:42):
take care of that naturally and you won't have to
use you know, insecticide and stuff like that. No. So, Plus, also,
bees are usually kind of finicky I saw as far
as what they'll pollinate and what they won't. Wasps are
not at all finnicky. They'll pollinate whatever. So they're non
selected pollinators, which make them like you could use them
to pollinate any kind of crop, which makes them pretty helpful.

(38:04):
And so they control other crop destroying insects and they
also pollinate crops too, so they are pretty useful. So
that means that you shouldn't just go around killing them.
I think we should say it again. You shouldn't kill
anything except mosquitoes, fleas, and ticks. And you also can't say, well,
they're they're a threat to humans because I looked up

(38:26):
some stats. Chuck, you ready for this? Yeah, you're not
gonna get killed with from a wasp, are you? No?
I mean yeah, but no, you're not so combined bees,
wasps and hornets, and hornets are just another type of wasp.
Is that so? Yeah? I hadn't hurt um. They kill
about sixty two Americans every year from anaphylactic shock. Right.

(38:50):
By contrast, three hundred Americans die from falling off of
ladders every year. In the UK. Get this, between two
thousand six two thousand and seven, eight people died from bees,
wasps or hornet stings. I'm including bees here, by the way.
And then in Australia, where you would guess that half
the human population is killed off every year by bees

(39:12):
and wasps and has to regenerate every spring. Now, between
two thousand and two thousand thirteen, there are only twenty
seven deaths total for the that thirteen years from bees, wasps,
and hornets things, which is pretty astounding. But it all
goes to say, like, don't listen to the murder hornet wrap.
The hornets and the wasps aren't out to kill you.

(39:33):
They don't want you anywhere near their nests. But they're
not like trying to to to wipe out your family.
They just want to be left alone. Basically, the murder
hornet wrap now here is a hornet and it's here
to say, come to kill people in a major way.
I think I can't wait to re listen to this
one because I'm pretty sure you said that they kill

(39:55):
sixty two million Americans every year. No, I think you did.
I might have been hearing things. It might have been
a computer glitch. Just sixty two, Okay, six to the two.
I really am curious. M On if you said a million,
so we'll find that will be an Easter egg for
us only. Uh so, yeah, don't kill the wasps. If

(40:16):
you have what you think is a wasp problem at
your house, you really don't unless it's you know, I mean,
if you have a really big wasp nest, like right
above your front door or something, I could see maybe
a case being made for removing it, having it professionally removed.
Or if your kids are playing out back and there's

(40:37):
a sinkhole from a yellow jacket's underground hundreds of yellow
jack and if you're allergic, getting that removed too. But
in general, like wasting and after you, they don't want
anything to do with you. They're not aggressive towards humans
unless you're come poking their thing with a stick. Um.
I love this, Robert says, and this takes like nerves
of steel, and he's like, if one lands on you, uh,

(40:59):
don't pay avoid swatting it or making swift movements and
just kind of sit there and it'll quickly fly off.
Like I don't want to kill a wasp, but if
a wasp lands on my arm, and I'm not gonna
be like, all right, little fella, you're just I'm just
gonna give you some time, moves me along. No, I would.
I would freak out and flail. I wouldn't swat at

(41:20):
it because I feel like I would get stung for sure,
but I would definitely do you know that, right? You
got to try not to do that. You have to
listen to Robert and don't pan good luck. Every time
I see don't panic in the wild, I just assume
that it's a reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
don't you. Yeah? I think so. So there's there's standing still.

(41:43):
That's one thing when one lands on you. Um okay,
that's that's great. Things you can do to keep them
from landing on you, though, or to not wear white
and yellow outdoors, Yeah, okay, I don't like white and yellow.
They white yellow doesn't look good on me any way. Um,
but those colors attract insects. Um. You don't want to

(42:04):
wear perfume because you may confuse them into thinking you're
a flower. Um. If you have your garbage can uncovered,
don't stand next to it. You want to cover your
garbage can, especially if you're us. We gotta we got
a stink. I always call it the stinkiest garbage can
in Atlanta. This is pretty bad too. It's a lot

(42:26):
of years of cat litter. Oh yeah, that's a stinky.
And then you will You can take down nests yourself
if it's below sixty degrees fahrenheight or fifteen point five
degrees celsius because they're probably dead in there anyway, so
it's a good time to take it down. But for
the most part, we're just going to go ahead and say,

(42:48):
don't take down a wasp nest that you want out
of your yard by yourself. Just don't do it. Hire
a professional. There are people who will take money in
exchange for coming to to get a net us out
of your yard. You can give them money for that,
and they know what they're doing, so you can feel
good about that about hiring them, and it also supports

(43:10):
local business too. Yeah, and don't get that uh was
ray that sprays from like twenty ft away and just
go home and like attack these nests with poison. Just
don't do it. No, stop killing things? What else you got?
I got one more thing? You have? Anything else? Okay?

(43:30):
So in Japan, it always circles back to Japan, doesn't
it chuck if it's quality and good, including their um um,
including the Asian giant wasp as well as yellow jackets
and some other types of wasps. Japanese culture or culinary
culture loves wasp larva. But to get wasp larva, you

(43:54):
have to go out in the wild, find a wasps
nest in the summer, and then take it back home
without stung, and raise the larva yourself. And then when
they're ready to go, you harvest them and eat them
in the fall, which is pretty interesting in and of itself, right,
it gets even more interesting than that because to find
a wasp nest in the woods, what they do is

(44:17):
they take raw fish. Japanese love raw fish, but they
share some of theirs with um wasps and they leave
it out his bait. And then when a wasp shows up.
They'll take chopsticks and a little hunk of this this
fish meat that they have a string tied too, and
they'll hand it to the wasp, and the wasp will
fly off with the hunk of fish to take back
to its larva its eggs, with the string dangling, which

(44:39):
makes it easier to follow back to the nest. And
after doing this a few times, they're probably successful enough
that they track the wasp all the way back. They
don't lose it, and they find the nest, and then
that's when they take it home, intend to a larva,
and then they eat it in the fall. That sounds
familiar for some reason. I might have heard that before.
Isn't that uh amazing? Well, that's all I've got for

(45:01):
wasp Chuck wasp out. Uh So, since Chuck said wasped out,
that means it's time for the listener mail. I'm gonna
call this Adam. I think you were wrong and Josh
was referencing they might be giants. It's a long winded title. Okay,
Hey guys, in your episode how We Almost Got Rid

(45:22):
of Polio, you read a listener mail that referred to
how Flame Thrower's Work episode. However, I'm somewhat sad that
the reference wasn't made for the they might be Giant song?
Is Stanboul not Constantinople? Josh made the statement, and it
was a wonderful wasted opportunity. Well, that's exactly what we're
talking about, right, Yeah, I said, not Constantinople. Yeah, that

(45:47):
you were talking about that they might be giants song? Right? Yeah,
of course you just didn't. He doesn't get me. He
just didn't say. Hey, by the way, that's that they
might be giant song. Hey, everybody open up for the
spoon feeding. Uh, just thought i'd drop you both the line.
I love the show and enjoy listening to it daily
to and from work, especially the wit and dry humor.
It comes over your hands, all right, he said, it's

(46:09):
very much my style, so much so that you aren't
sure if that was a joke. Even told wow, this
is getting very meta. You both make my commute tolerable
and enjoyable. Thanks, guys. That is from Adam P and
Gulfport Mississip. Nice Adam for you. From now on, whenever
I make a joke, I'm gonna add waca Waca'll be

(46:32):
just for Adam. Thanks a lot, Adam. We appreciate that.
Thank you for listening to us and for lending us
rag on you. We do it lovingly and jokingly. We
hope you know. Of course, if you want us to
rag on you, well you send us an email and
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You can send it to stuff podcast at iHeart radio
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(46:57):
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hm