Bulldog ants in Australia wander around in a solitary fashion, and will approach and attach without provocation. Well…they do consider being within their visual field as provocation…Fiesty little fellows!
Yellow jackets will attack you as individuals, and will do so aggressively when you aren’t doing anything to disturb them aside from breathing some of the same air.
A few weeks ago I was just locking up my car, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Looking around there was no-one, but I heard a squeaky voice - it was coming from an ant on the ground. “Whoever double-crosses me and leaves me alive”, he said, “knows nothing about Tuco. Today, you will feel the devil bite your ass”.
So I looked at him, and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and he looked at me, and I could swear there was dramatic music in the background. He was reaching for his pistol so I squashed him with my foot. “When you have to shoot”, I said, “you shoot, don’t talk”.
But just as I’m feelin’ relieved a bunch of other ants come along, older-looking, desperate-looking ants. They had the look of ants that had nowhere to run, nowhere to go. Ants that had outlived their time. Ants that came too late and stayed too long. Real mean-lookin’ ants, the kind that’d kill ya’ soon as look at ya’. And yet I had a sense that they were tired of their life, tired of everything. Their future was all used up.
So I squashed 'em as well.
I have never seen a yellow jacket attack unprovoked. You might not realize how you provoked them, but I would be amazed if it was really nothing.
When I used to be a counselor at a kids’ camp, you could count on yellow jackets showing up to share some of each meal. You just had to sit very still when they came around. Sometimes, you had to grit your teeth while a curious one crawled all over your fingers, maybe even chewing on you a little to see if you are edible. I had the distinction that not a single one of my kids ever got stung - I used to warn them, “If you freak out and start flailing, I’ll bite you even if the yellow jackets don’t.”
(In fact, I got stung by yellow jackets for the first time in my life last weekend. In this case, the provocation was that I ran my lawn mower right over the top of their nest.)