An Investigation of Modern Physics by Brian Williams
RSS icon Home icon
  • Strange Wasp Behaviour.

    Posted on August 28th, 2010 Brian No comments

    Head Hunting Wasps.

    Many years ago, (here he goes again), we became plagued by wasps, and my wife forced me into the bathroom, (which was the worst effected) with a rolled up newspaper. After about 10 minutes of valiant efforts, I emerged triumphantly, having killed about 20 wasps. About halve an hour later, I re-entered the bathroom to clear away the bodies.

    On arriving at the window area where most of the dead wasps were, I noticed about 6 more active wasps which seemed to be foraging amongst the dead ones. Closer scrutiny showed that these wasps were cutting off the heads of the dead ones and carrying them away, leaving the bodies behind for me to clear away. On the assumption that the wasps were not carrying out head transplantation, has anyone come across this behaviour and has a more logical explanation?

    Wasp Survival.

    This happened not 8 feet away from my above battle with the wasps, and happened about the same period. My first ever vehicle was a WW2 Ford Jeep. This had been fitted with a van body. After a few years I decided to strip off the van body and put the jeep back into its original condition. After stripping off the body I detached the windscreen assembly. Underneath the this assembly I found a wasp, apparently dead, that had been trapped beneath the Sorbo rubber seal.  I left the wasp where it was and carried on working.

    After about an hour and a half I noticed that the wasp was twitching. Some three hours later the wasp was capable of flying away.

    I did some checks on the jeep assembly to see if the wasp could have got into its position after the van body had been fitted, but there was no possible access. This meant that the wasp had been trapped under the seal for just under 5 years!

    No water, no light, no food!  High temperatures from the sun and engine in summer and freezing temperatures in winter.

    For 5 years! Tough eh.

     

    7 responses to “Strange Wasp Behaviour.”

    1. Tutor

      Hello! I just would like to give a huge thumbs up for the great info you have here on your website. I will be coming back to your website for more soon.

    2. Reiher

      You’ve given me a unique idea. Thanks for sharing this information with me.

    3. dave

      I have recently twice come across wasps carrying others heads.. I would love to know the reason for this.. One time my wife reckons the 2 were fighting – so it seemed also a bit like a trophy.. very wierd.. any reasons for this would be appreciated 🙂

    4. Jarod Truslow

      Thank you for this wonderful post! It has long been incredibly useful. I wish that you will carry on posting your knowledge with us.

    5. Damaris Bicket

      Fantastic weblog you might have obtained here.. It’s difficult to search out high-high quality producing like yours as of late. I genuinely value people like you! Take care!!

    6. Monique Starcevic

      Incredible points. Outstanding arguments. Keep up the amazing work.

    7. You are not the average website article writer, gentleman. You certainly have got some thing powerful to increase the net. Your own style is really robust that you could almost pull off being a negative article writer, yet you’re even amazing at articulating what you have to point out. Keep in the great work gentleman!

    Leave a reply