Taking the Sting Out of Wasps | Hacker News Reader

Taking the Sting Out of Wasps

wsj.com

10 pointsgumby14 comments

I've always wondered why wasps haven't started to evolve away from stinging humans. Stinging other animals makes sense, it gets the animal to get the heck away from the nest. But sting a human and they're likely to go scorched earth and destroy your entire nest, with prejudice.

I'd wager that 99% of wasps never encounter humans in their lifetime.

I'm pretty sure they're all nesting in my house right now, so I'm not sure that statistic is accurate.

Evolution works on a ... slightly different schedule.

Not necessarily. You can see evolution much faster than people expect. Especially in quickly reproducing animals. Some traits are evolved to be easier to evolve as well. The ease of change itself is an evolutionary advantage. I wouldn't bet on stingers falling into that category. I would also suspect that wasps stinging humans is still fairly useful and that its disadvantages are basically invisible to the biological processes.

> I would also suspect that wasps stinging humans is still fairly useful and that its disadvantages are basically invisible to the biological processes.

Yeah, I think that's really the heart of my question. What are the disadvantages of stinging humans (and nesting near them) vs the advantages. You may be right that the disadvantages aren't enough to bring significant evolutionary pressure to bear.

My other wasp musing that I've never had answered, is when you destroy a wasp nest, what do the wasps that are "out on patrol" do? Do they form another nest with other stragglers, join another group, or just buzz around until they run out of steam and then die? I would assume it is choice one or three. Choice one seems to make sense if enough of the core group is left, but can just one or two wasps manage to regroup and start over?

The man killing "my" nest said that they just fly around like lost souls before they die after a while. But who knows, I won't be surprised if it depends on the specie of wasp.

> the specie of wasp

Now you've sent me down another rabbit hole to see if there were ever any coins with wasps on them. Specie means coinage, not the singular form of species, which is... species. Apparently, yes is the answer to the coin question, but not many.

Eh...I don't buy it. I'll gladly take a few more spiders in my house if I didn't have to deal with wasps nesting under my deck/house and being a threat to my children and neighbor children. The medical stuff is all speculative and not particularly useful. I still hate wasps even after reading this article.

People keep telling me "wasps are great because they eat the spiders" and I really don't get it. I'll take spiders over wasps any day of the week.

Every time I see a fig tree now I imagine the tiny wasp that was trapped inside the fruit. Still delicious though.

Hmm... I'd still like to build a time machine and go back and stop myself from accidentally stepping on an underground wasp nest... that was not pleasant.

Incredible article. I had no ideas wasps were this useful! As described in the article, I used to hate them, now I will see them with new eyes.

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