Wasps Facts: Insects Possess Secret Intelligence, Providing High Value to the Environment

Wasps are often seen as annoying, aggressive, and harmful insects that ruin our picnics and sting us for no reason.

However, these stereotypes are unfair and inaccurate since wasps are fascinating creatures with complex cognitive abilities and play vital roles in nature.

Wasps are intelligent learners

(Photo : JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images)

Wasps belong to the order Hymenoptera, which includes bees, ants, and sawflies. These insects have relatively large brains compared to their body size, and they can perform various cognitive tasks such as memory, communication, and problem-solving.

Wasps are especially good at learning visual information, such as colors, shapes, and patterns.

Researchers have trained wasps to discriminate between different hues of blue cards using other methods of conditioning.

They found that wasps can learn the task in different ways depending on how they are trained.

For example, some wasps learned to associate a specific color with a reward (sugar water), while others learned to avoid a color that had no reward.

Some wasps also learned to generalize the task to new situations, such as different card orientations or locations.

Wasps can also recognize human faces, which is a rare ability among insects. In a study by Sheehan and Tibbetts, paper wasps (Polistes fuscatus) were trained to associate individual human faces with a reward or a punishment.

The wasps could learn the faces and respond accordingly, even when the faces were presented in different sizes or angles.

These studies showed that wasps have impressive learning skills that allow them to adapt to their environment and exploit new resources.

Wasps can also use their learning abilities to cooperate and coordinate their actions in social groups.

Also Read: Parasite Wasp: The Wasp Family's Scariest Member

Wasps are beneficial for ecosystems and humans

Wasps are not only smart but also useful. They provide many ecological services that benefit both natural ecosystems and human society.

One of the most important services is biological control, which means that wasps help regulate the populations of other insects that can be pests or diseases.

Wasps are predators that feed on a variety of arthropods, such as aphids, caterpillars, flies, and spiders.

By doing so, they reduce the damage that these herbivores cause to plants and crops. They can also prevent the spread of pathogens by killing infected hosts or removing dead bodies from their nests.

Wasps are also pollinators, which means that they transfer pollen from one flower to another, enabling plant reproduction.

Although wasps are not as efficient as bees in pollination, they still visit many flowers and contribute to the diversity and stability of plant communities. Some plants even depend on specific wasp species for their pollination, such as figs and orchids.

They can also provide other benefits for humans, such as producing useful substances or inspiring new technologies.

For example, some wasp species produce silk or paper that can be used for various purposes. Some wasp venom components have potential medical applications, such as treating cancer or inflammation.

Meanwhile, some wasp behaviors or structures can inspire novel solutions for engineering or design problems, such as swarm intelligence or nanomaterials.