Cool story, bro.
Oh
my
god.
Nailed it in the first 6 words, Urbanredneck.
That, at least, is probably true. Apiarists are well aware of this. Their bees become used to their presence and are much less aggressive than they are to strangers. But that’s not surprising, all animals can become habituated to certain stimuli. I can happily play with my dog, but if a stranger comes into my yard, they will get attacked. That sort of habituation is normal for all animals.
It’s also not revenge in any possible sense.
How did he know that wasp was dead? Wasps die all the time. How did he identify a random dead wasp as the one that had attacked him?
Yes, I’m fully aware that the story sounds strange. How can he ID just one wasp? I dont know. He said when he walked back in all the wasps were peaceful except and one was lying there dead where had not been a dead wasp before. This is something maybe a scientist could investigate.
Again I do know bees and other insects can show amazing behaviors which show a collective “hive” mind. Ex. bees doing their “dance” which show where sources of nectar lie. Ants and termites forming symbiotic relationships with and even “farming” other insects LINK. They are really amazing little critters so while I know the story sounds odd, I wouldnt put it past them.
I’ve been a working PhD entomologist for almost 20 years.
Insects are, to put it bluntly, dumb as hell (notwithstanding some of the amazing things honeybee hives can do - on an individual level bees are dumb too). Pretty much everything they do is hard-wired into their nervous system. You can chop off their heads and they really don’t notice; they’ll keep on trying to do their thing until they starve or desiccate.
Sure, you can condition them to stimuli. They can even “learn” to an extent. But planning? Revenge? it is to laugh.
When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way. . .
Hmmmm, mozchron the PhD entomologist or UrbanRedneck’s friend . . . I dunno…
First, it was a she wasp. Secondly, he recognized her by her waspish waist.
You guys are making me laugh this morning. Pool, I can’t stop laughing at your post.
But maybe the aggression was death throes or something. That’s probably what I’d have thought, rather than that the wasp hive had taken revenge on my behalf.
No, it doesn’t actually sound strange. It sounds like fairly ordinary events over-interpreted by someone antropomorphizing wasps.
I expect different wasp species have different instincts for personal space, but for many you need to actually disturb the nest or flail around in the vicinity before they act on the threat. Your friend obviously didn’t, and it’s possible they even were acclimatized to his presence somewhat, whether it be through accepting his body odour as a normal occurence or whatever. He interpreted that as “an understanding”, while in reality it was just a case of not triggering the wasps’ threat-sensors.
Now whatever it was your friend considered as a wasp “being aggressive towards him”, it was not something the hive-mind considered a breech of that non-existing “understanding” and punished by death, but it’s at least possible that the aggressive wasp and the dead wasp were and of the same and that the agressive behaviour was due to a dysfunction of some sort that either killed it or caused the other wasps to kill it. But that’s by no means certain, even if it’s more plausible than the interpretation you present.
Awesome! Thanks Colibri, DrDeth, and mozchron for humoring me and saying why your answers are better than the tire guy’s (his own unknown college study path notwithstanding).
I bet that bugs you. 
My guess is that it is a variety of the “Clever Hans” effect.
The first man’s demeanor and body language do not trigger the wasps’ attack response, not because they “recognize” him and have an “understanding” with him, but rather because the man has grown used to them and acts calm, moves slowly, etc. - even if not conciously.
Others become tense and nervous when they spot the wasps, startle, etc. and this triggers the wasps’ defensive actions - making the person (understandably) more nervous, leadong to a bad feedback loop.
The man interprets this as “cleverness” on behalf of the wasps, but it isn’t. It is a simple reaction to the man’s own body language, of which he is unaware.
Neurons aren’t very intelligent but some pretty amazing things can happen if you get enough of them networked together.
It’s an analogy; it hasn’t escaped my notice that insects aren’t neurons. I’m also not asserting that hive insects possess a collective intelligence directly analogous to our individual minds, but it seems likely that a consideration of insect intelligence should take the collectivity into account. Keep in mind that a huge portion of our own vaunted intelligence isn’t worth a lot in isolation and only becomes impressive when we’re interconnected and communicating.
Hath not an insect compound eyes? hath not an insect antennae, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same nectar, hurt with the same flyswatters, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
estivated and hibernated by the same winter and summer, as
a mammal is? If you squish us, do we not splatter?
if you tickle us, do we not fly? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that.
I have had wasps build nests at the entrance to my shed. My “understanding” with them was that I’d come back with a can of wasp-killer at the first opportunity and blast them into the hereafter. Strangely, they’ve never sensed my body language and attacked or fled while they had the opportunity.
Actually, it sounds like you’ll believe any tall tale your friend tells you, no matter how ridiculous. It is beyond absurd to think that finding one dead wasp is evidence that the wasp colony was trying to protect your friend from a misbehaving colony member.
As others have said, if the wasps in fact treated your friend differently (something that would actually have to be established) it was due to the fact that he behaved differently around them than others, or that they had become habituated to them.
Why do spiders bite people?We are too large to be prey, and their feeble vision shows us as a big pink mass-so why endanger themselves by biting humans?
Self defense. Spiders won’t normally bite people unless they feel threatened. Likewise, the venom of venomous snakes is primarily for subduing prey, not for defense, but they will bite if threatened.