One of the scarier wasps you'll see this summer is also one of the least likely to bother you: the cicada killer.
Cicada killers are big. Females can reach two inches long, roughly the length of your thumb from knuckle to tip. They look like a yellowjacket that spent the off-season at the gym.
By summer, they're digging burrows in bare or sparsely vegetated soil in sunny spots.
The female hunts cicadas, paralyzes one with a sting, and hauls it back to the burrow, often carrying prey as heavy as or heavier than herself. She lays one egg on it and seals the chamber. The larva consumes the cicada provisions, then spends the winter underground before emerging the following summer.
She does this alone. There is no colony, no swarm, no workers to call on, and no nest to defend in any meaningful sense.
The males, which are the ones most likely to come buzzing around your head, have no stinger at all. The whole intimidating display is theater. They're defending territory from other males and can't do anything to you.
A female cicada killer can sting if you grab or trap her. Short of that, she's spending her summer removing cicadas from the trees and otherwise minding her beeswax.
anti-wasp propaganda again nooooo......
my one wish is for people to understand that bees are a monophyletic group within wasps too and that wasps aren't evil.. the predatory ones are really important for pest control and they're all important pollinators!!! ecology doesn't have heroes and villains!! we cannot apply anthropocentric, moralistic frameworks to ecosystems, the metaphor doesn't work
anyone else procrastinate things they want to do? i want to play my games so bad, i want to read all the manga i have, but i dont do any of it and doomscroll and sleep instead like WHYYY do i do that and whenever i do start playing/reading i get annoyed in like 10 minutes HELPMEE
dog hatred boils down to “train your animal and stop letting it do whatever it wants.” if you own any slightly odd animal (rats, reptiles, avians like pigeons/doves, BUGS) you gotta deal with people telling you how much they want to/enjoy killing them when you bring it up lol
This a carpenter bee seen up close (Xylocopa ruficornis). Despite their large size, these bees are generally docile and are unlikely to sting unless they feel threatened or are handled roughly.
[📹 jithesh_pai]