Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.
Trending News
Are wasps really stupid?
People often tell me if you kill a warp, it will cause more of them to come. So my question is a two fold one. Firstly is this actually true? Secondly, if it is true, are these wasps idiots? To me it seems like a really dumb move to fly off to some location where it is known that a fellow wasp or wasps have been killed. I know they don't really have the intelligence to reason that out, but surely evolution would have stopped this from being the case. Arriving at a place where other wasps have been killed is almost certain to result in the deaths of more if not all of the others. Evolution would then favour the ones that had a genetic predisposition to stay the hell away.
4 Answers
- VincentLv 59 years agoFavorite Answer
"Killer bees" come to mind. They don't attack until the pheromone is released to excite the hive members. When one stings a person or other enemy it leaves a pheromone vapor trail. The person stung will be the main object of their attack.
Beekeepers use smokers to mask the pheromones. They have continue smoking the hive to retard the first alert. Once the attack pheromone is release even calmer bees attack. It is their desire to protect the hive that makes them so mean seeming. They don't go hunting humans, they just react to protect the hive. Killer Bees are much more responsive to this protection because of the history of predation on their hives. Wasps are more like Killer bees in this sense then the original hive kept bees.
Even the Killer Bees in South America are being handled by the Beekeepers now. Our neighbors down south are learning to live with these aggressive insects. Their smokers are about three times bigger than the ones we use up North. They keep the hives away from inhabited areas of humans to reduce the attacks. Keeping killer bees is like keeping a hive of wasps. The main advantage is that you get honey from the Bees but none from the wasps. They are also really good pollinators.
Genetically, the wasps have evolved over the millennium to attack not run when danger is presented.
Their evolutionary strategy has developed to destroy the enemy not run from them. If they get separated, the hive dies.
- Anonymous9 years ago
They come to attack the thing doing the killing! When wasps are being "attacked" they send out a pheromone to tell other wasps they are in trouble. A swarm of wasps would definitely make me run from a single wasp I was trying to kill. Seems like this is a very smart tactic to me.
- Anonymous9 years ago
how much intelligence do you expect an insect to have? be serious
as far as i know, the wasp that gets flattened releases particular pheromones when in distress (you about to kill it) and this either aggravates or attracts other wasps when they detect this pheromone in the air. they are not able think in advance about the threat of being squashed if they fly in a particular place, they are just insects lol
- 9 years ago
If it's true, it's probably to retrieve the body.
Ants do that, especially Brazilian area ants. If one dies, the others go to pick up the body and take it back to the nest.
