i fucking love wasps

i also fw other bugs that get disproportionately hated on, mod is atlas (he/it)

[wasp-propaganda-official]

i wanted to pop in and say that im sorry there hasnt been much activity here in a hot minute, downside of letting a single headmate make a blog is that sometimes they dont wanna front for weeks to months at a time, and none of us want to take over its blog because bugs'll be upset if we mess with his stuff

[wasp-propaganda-official]

hey, look y'all i'm really sorry but this blog isnt going to be active anymore, atlas (the headmate who made and ran this blog) went dormant and though the rest of us enjoy wasps, none of us have strong enough feeling on them to run a blog about them, i'm not gonna delete this blog because i think theres some important info about wasps and mosquitoes on here, but it's not gonna be active anymore.

[bogleech]

Mosquitoes actually are not replaceable in any ecosystem that naturally has them and that includes replacing them with any of the non biting species because these are the traits that make them so core to food webs:

Tiny

Can use every single pool of moisture to raise generations no matter how dirty and stagnant and low in oxygen

Can fly

Males get by on just sugars

Females take protein from larger animals to manufacture thousands more eggs

All these things combined allow thst ecosystem to make huge volumes of insects from conditions barren to most other macroscopic life. You might think there are other insects that seem to make huge massive swarms out of nothing but there's really nothing that hits all the same qualities *except other insects that also suck blood.*

It's the precise combo of being able to "prey" on things millions of times larger and breed in nothing but a few drops of filthy rainwater or the moisture in a rotten log. That's the most efficient combination for anything that size to multiply that rapidly where nothing else can even survive, except of course the things that can move in because they eat them :)

[bogleech]

A lot of people ask "could they just not be itchy though?" and I regret to inform that isn't actually their doing, there's no evolutionary advantage to making you itchy. That's your own body detecting the intrusion of another creature's saliva into your skin, where it doesn't belong, and reacting with histamines.

If you've ever been bit hard enough by a cat, dog or even human you may notice a similar effect!

[kyanve]

I remember having a conversation with someone about my hummingbird banding volunteering and how the data went toward support for conservation efforts among other things.

They were all for that, and loved hummingbirds and supported it!

And made a quip about how the only thing they wanted to see extinct were mosquitoes and small biting insects/fruit flies.

40 to 60% of a hummingbird’s diet, and their main source of other nutrients, is small, soft bodied insects.

Including mosquitoes and fruit flies.

They had a massive struggle not wanting to accept that no fruit flies and mosquitoes = no hummingbirds.

[headspace-hotel]

Bluebirds also eat tons of mosquitoes!

[bogleech]

I've also added this on other big threads about this topic but I should add it here: Being INCREDIBLY OBNOXIOUS to larger animals, even when they aren't spreading any pathogens (and again, most mosquitoes don't!) actually is another vital purpose. Ecosystems need biting and stinging things to keep big, stompy, hungry beasts from getting too cozy. Mammals are the most resource-hogging animals in almost any biome but parasites can inhibit their growth a little (a good thing), discourage them from spending as much time in the same area or ward them away from whole areas to begin with. Mosquitoes in particular breed in filthy, stagnant bacteria-rich water. You know what leaves behind conditions like that? ANIMALS! Animals eating all the plants, wallowing in the mud and shitting everywhere! A herd of ungulates can turn a lush and healthy marsh into just a cesspit if nothing stops them. But it's mosquitoes that find a cesspit an appealing nursery. And then you get a cloud of mosquitoes so dense that the ungulates move on! There used to be a great BBC documentary that actually showed "mosquito season" driving a mass migration of African megafauna but the shittified search engines right now are only showing me articles about mosquito control no matter how I try to find this again, gee thanks, maybe someone else can find it? So while the "mosquitoes are bad" all the big animals leave for months. Months of the plants growing back, months of the water clearing up until it's drinkable again (and the mosquito larvae themselves are filter feeders!), months of the mosquitoes becoming food for tiny birds and lizards and arachnids and amphibians, and the beautiful wetland is back again strong enough to survive the repeat of that cycle the next year. Everything you hate in nature - the ticks, the territorial wasps, the stinging plants - are pretty much nature's immune system. Obviously this doesn't mean the big mammals are "bad" either. The cycles of destruction are themselves also something ecosystems come to rely on as a regulatory force :)

[waspdaily]

Obligatory first post

Happy waspday

[wasp-propaganda-official]

i wanted to pop in and say that im sorry there hasnt been much activity here in a hot minute, downside of letting a single headmate make a blog is that sometimes they dont wanna front for weeks to months at a time, and none of us want to take over its blog because bugs'll be upset if we mess with his stuff

[your-fav-is-plural]

wasps :3 (no im totally not dedicated to wasp propaganda what are you talking about)

Wasps from Real Life are Plural!

[wasp-propaganda-official]

once again not atlas

[shortgremlinman]

Well get them out then

[shortgremlinman]

the wasps are in here Wednesday

[shortgremlinman]

the wasps are in here Wednesday

[wasp-propaganda-official]

wasp propaganda wednesday

[ayanos-pl]

セグロアシナガバチ今季初見（4月25日）

a paper wasp (Polistes jokahamae)

[wasp-propaganda-official]

gorgeous

[hollowedskin]

Seeing a lot of posts like "umm why does everyone love bees and hate wasps, bees are bastards and they sting you why are they the only insect anyone actually cares about, why does everyone hate wasps when they're the same as bees"

Well you see, everyone ALSO used to hate bees. Like. You guys are just too young to remember when everyone who wasn't an apiarist or a gardener or an ecologist was militantly aggressive towards bees Because They Sting You. People would burn their hives and kill them all when they were found, not call a bee guy to relocate them, they'd stomp bees in the clover if they saw them. They actively hunted down and destroyed hives.

The reason "everyone loves bees" isnt an arbitrary whimsical choice because they're cuter than wasps. It's because bee lovers made a HUGE effort to encourage people to see bees as valuable pollinators and friendly little guys that just want to defend their hive. They taught people to see bees as cute and fluffy! There were awareness campaigns about the value of bees, there were advertisements, there were little documentaries and articles teaching people how to readjust their views on bees so that the hatred of them didn't cause complete ecological and agricultural collapse.

Bee lovers used to be in the exact same position that everyone who loves other insects is - you say that you like this creature and everyone in a 10km radius comes crawling over to tell you all the ways they personally would kill them.

The fact that it's so common now for people to think bees are cute fun little guys doing an important job is a fucking monumental victory and it was hard won, and it's as recent as in the last 20 years. When I was a kid in the 90s, everyone hated bees except ecologists and bug guys.

If you want this for wasps too (which i also want) you gotta put the work in to change people's perceptions.

[bogleech]

True, I remember a kid in my 1991 grade school class even believed bees "steal" pollen from flowers. I also remember lizards, toads, and bats all still being loathed by everyone I met.

[cathartidae]

WAUCE BLAST

(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30)

[cathartidae]

WAUCE BLAST....

PART TWO!!!!!!!!!

(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30)

[cathartidae]

FUCK YOU WAUCE BLAST 3

(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30)

[cathartidae]

did someone say wauce blast four? no? fuck you

(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30)

[cathartidae]

(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30)

YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT FUCKIN TIME IT IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! wauce blast FIVE bitch thats right FIVE

[wasp-propaganda-official]

WAUCE BLAST!!!!! also an amazing way to show the range of wasps!

[wasp-propaganda-official]

2 pounds of buttered noodles with shredded parmesan and a lavender limade mocktail and theres a chicken beside me

[wasp-propaganda-official]

WRONG BLOG this is not the meal of a wasp it is the meal of a man who has made a horrible mistake

[wasp-propaganda-official]

2 pounds of buttered noodles with shredded parmesan and a lavender limade mocktail and theres a chicken beside me

[wasp-propaganda-official]

Ok

i have coun for wares

[wasp-propaganda-official]

its wasp appreciation wednesday :3!!

[textless]

[wasp-propaganda-official]

oh she is beautiful, i love her colors

[wasp-propaganda-official]

As a wasp LOVER I am SOOO happy to see this blog!! showed it to my irl who responded “are you sure that’s not just you”

:333 i love wasps with my whole heart and im very happy to see wasp lovers come out of the woodwork to cheer on wasps!!!

[wasp-propaganda-official]

i fucking hate kids on pinterest, jesus y'all its not that hard to not wish death apon an entire order of animals

[ID: three screenshots of pinterest comments with usernames cropped out, the first one reads "The reason why I haven't killed them all is because I lack the courage to do so" the second reads "the last time i saw a red wasp it landed on me and stung me so i grabbed it as it was flying away and ripped it in half." and the third one reads "Well most wasps sting you for just existing so 😭" End ID]

jesus fucking christ grrrgrgrrggrrrrr

why tf would it be acceptable to brag about wanting to kill any [PT: any] animals, i have a phobia of needles but im not out here saying that vaccines shouldnt exist

[zoelikesbugs]

friend :) look how pretty her colors are!!

[wasp-propaganda-official]

shes gorgeous :3