There are about 18,000 species of wasps in North America. Roughly 20 of them can hurt you.
The wasps people fear are all from one family: Vespidae. They make up less than 1% of wasp species on the continent. They build the visible nests, they defend them aggressively, and they're the ones you remember from a bad encounter.
The other 99% live solitary lives and ignore humans entirely. Many can't sting at all. Many more have stingers but never use them on people because they don't have a nest to defend.
What they do instead is hunt other insects. A single mud dauber stocks her nest with paralyzed spiders, including widows and recluses. A braconid wasp lays eggs in tomato hornworms. An ichneumon wasp parasitizes wood-boring beetles that kill ash trees. A cuckoo wasp infiltrates the nests of other wasps and bees. Some species control aphids; others control caterpillars, beetle grubs, or flies.
Most agricultural pest insects in North America are controlled, in part, by parasitic wasps that almost no human ever sees. There are over 25,000 species of ichneumon wasps alone, and they keep entire orders of insects in check.
The five or so wasp species that ruin a picnic in late August are real. The 17,995 species that are running the pest control infrastructure of an entire continent get almost none.
I’m going to be honest. I’m a huge fan of policing your own. MLB does it. NHL does it. NFL does it. The only way to get players to stop acting like idiots, is to let them know when they are. If a team is going to constantly flop and foul bait, then you may as well get your money’s worth. I’d love to see more of this in the NBA. It’s the only way things are going to get cleaned up. Obviously, the league isn’t going to fix it.
Rich Paul says Scottie Pippen was more impactful than MJ 👀
“I think Scottie’s rings are the same as Michael Jordan’s. He was the most impactful player on the team. If you unplug Scottie Pippen off that team, Jordan is 0-6”
(h/t @HeatCulture13 )
Osi Umenyiora played against the Tony Romo Dallas Cowboys, so I was curious for his thoughts on Romo overall.
He called him the best quarterback that they ever faced in that time. He was very specific that he was the best.
Some high praise.