Q:When I was a child, I saw something that changed my mind about wasps forever. My dad was doing some cabin construction work and I was hanging out at the site. Some other guy had half-crushed a wasp with a hammer, but it was still alive. As I watched, a second wasp flew to its side, and stroked it -actually stroked it, with what I can I can only describe as tenderness - with its antennae until the injured wasp stopped moving and died. Then the second wasp flew away, and I did not see it again.
She was probably trying to communicate with her sister, probably trying to tell her to come back to the nest or share information about the area, and was very confused by the distorted responses she was getting, likely mixed with scent-based distress signals.
When the responses stopped, she probably went home and told the others to be on alert for danger :(
I’m not anthropomorphizing a bit here. Social wasps groom one another, share a LOT of information, get stressed when separated
from their close relatives, and they recognize one another visually, like we humans do, by the fact that every single one has a unique face, even in the same “hive:”
I almost feel bad for my seemingly irreparable phobia of them now.
