Why Murder Hornets Are Only Dangerous to Americans

when Australian sugarcane farmers had problems with beetles devouring their crops they devised a cutthroat strategy of introducing cane toads into the local ecosystem the amphibian had garnered a reputation across the world for an insatiable appetite for the sugar obsessed beetles and many farmers believe that these toads were a safer alternative to harsh chemical pesticides available at the time the plan ended up backfiring on them as the toads quickly reproduced out of control becoming a larger problem than the beetles they were introduced to deal with in the first place any species that is introduced into a new environment has the potential to become an invasive species though they usually don't come with any danger to human populations recently we've encountered a new invasive species in North America the giant Asian Hornet or as they've been so alarmingly dubbed murder Hornets but are they as dangerous as their name might suggest [Music] if you think you see a giant Asian Hornet please alert local ecology experts and they'll be able to handle it for you otherwise you can avoid them by refraining from having sugary drinks outdoors and just by leaving them to their own devices and with that out of the way let's get into it Vespa manda manda rib Mandarin even like the Mandarin Mandarin yea Mandarin Nia oh cool thanks hey no problem Vespa Mandarin eeeh or the giant Asian Hornet are part of the vespidae family which includes all wasps of the creatures that we call Hornets most are actually different wasp species in fact all Hornets are wasps but not all wasps are Hornets the only true Hornets are those in the genus Vespa Hornet is just a name to classify the largest species of wasp so what I'll jacuzzis are hot dogs but not all hot tubs of jacuzzis Hornets are typically much larger and chubbier than their wasp counterparts and sometimes forego the usual yellow black coloration for white black the giant Asian Hornet in particular is about 3.5 to 5 centimetres long with a wingspan between 4 to 7 centimeters situating it firmly as the largest Hornet species on earth they have solid black or brown eyes and a large mandible with the black tooth that they use to burrow in the ground both workers and queens have reproductive organs but workers do not reproduce the only difference between royalty and peasantry is size as opposed to bees which have distinct anatomical differences between each caste giant Asian Hornets typically live in low mountainous and forested areas primarily in Southeast Asia and most predominantly in Japan unlike other wasps or bees the Mandarin iya uses their big mandibles to dig burrows underground and sometimes even appropriate the homes of small rodents instead of making hives at elevation imagine a minefield except instead of exploding you're swarmed by a thousand Angry Hornets giant Hornets are insectivorous omnivores that primarily feed on beetles other Vest bids and bee however they also have a penchant for the natural sugars in SAP and fruit though interestingly enough adult worker Hornets cannot digest solid foods any solids they consume are fed to larvae via trophallaxis aka the transfer of food either mouth to mouth or mouth to asses cheese workers get their caloric intake by sipping on SAP and on the saliva of their larvae sometimes starving workers will hug other workers tight and pass foodstuffs back and forth between them to feed oh oh kind of like the lady in the trout yeah except instead of spaghetti its chewed up balls of flesh here let me there that's better huh why are you like this giant Asian Hornets are also you social which means that they live among multiple generations rear their young collectively and have distinct reproductive and non reproductive classes giant Hornets are also unique as they're the only youth social wasps species that will coordinate attacks on other insect hives including bee nests and other wasps these invasions usually occur near the end of summer right before their mating season in order to ensure a plentiful bounty for the new generation and to stockpile food for the winter these attacks take place over the course of three phases the first of which is dubbed the hunting phase this phase sees giant hornets waiting at the entrance to an enemy hive marking it with pheromones and snatching up any wayward foes to bring them home to feed their larvae this phase can go on indefinitely and progression to the next phase is dependent on the distance between the home hive and the enemy hive the next phase the slaughter is as horrible as it sounds at this time anywhere from 2 to 50 Hornets will zero in on a hive marked with pheromones secreted by a worker scout the invading army will surround an enemy hive and wait by the entrance for defenders to rally for war as the guards emerge from the hive the Hornets will swarm and tear them limb from limb up to 50 percent of the attackers may die in a Hornet on Hornet war but any bee colonies unlucky enough to bear the brunt of a slaughter will usually fall without striking a single casualty on the Raiders during this phase the Hornets will ignore the corpses of their enemies and occasionally the slaughter will go on for so long that the invading soldiers died of starvation before the day is won if the Hornets succeed in butchering their prey then the occupation can begin this is the final phase of the giant Asian Hornets invasion season and the Hornets become hyper territorial over their plunder many workers will sleep in occupied territory as they grind the bodies of their rivals and their progeny into balls of bug meat to feed their new generation of Queens just dating at home so all of that is pretty horrible but the question still stands just how dangerous are these bugs to us if you saw our video on ants you might recall Justin Schmidt and coyote Peterson our two favorite gluttons for punishment while Schmidt's insects sting pain index might not have the giant Asian Hornet on its list Peterson's set out to determine where it should be placed that is on a sliding scale from one being almost unnoticeable like a mosquito bite and four being well abject torment like the sting of the bullet ant hole man wave at Disney is really quick look at the welt shooting pain does the pain of the giant Asian Hornet translate to higher fatality rates though according to a kitto kawahara an associate professor with the University of Florida not necessarily having grown up in Japan he notes that these creatures were responsible for less than 13 deaths per year for 2017 and 2018 on top of that Kalwa Hara argues that Japanese people spent a lot of time in the woods doing things like shinrin yoku or forest bathing which is the whittlin equivalent of sunbathing so the likelihood of the average Japanese person to encounter one of these monsters is high yet the number of deaths remained relatively low which is good to hear wait they only kill like 13 people eh in Japan actually yep you're statistically more likely to die by lightning strike or horse riding accident then you are to die getting stung by a giant Hornet even if you live smack-dab in the middle of their habitat that is if you're not allergic well why the hell they call my two Hornets then bro well they're called murder Hornets because like drama do you remember Africanized killer bees from the 90s they were killers at all they were just bees and similarly these Hornets aren't murderers they're just Hornets the problem with the giant Asian Hornet is that they've been accidentally introduced to the environments that don't have a niche for them kawahara notes that only about 2% of cargo containers are searched for pests and invasive species so it's altogether likely that these giant Hornets just slipped in under the radar see when people say murder Hornets they're thinking that they murder humans but as we learn from the slaughter phase earlier we're not the ones that they're beheading ecologists fear that since these giant Hornets have no natural predators in North America their population could spiral out of control if their population booms they would compete amongst themselves for food and possibly decimate the honeybee population in the crossfire other bees in Japan too why is it a problem they're the species of honeybee endemic to North America apis mellifera doesn't have any defense mechanisms against the sort of attack that the giant Asian Hornet can mount the Japanese honey bee or apis cerana japonica on the other hand does when a Japanese honeybee colony discovers a giant Hornet Scout in the hunting phase of their invasion season they quickly sound the alarm calling for hundreds of worker bees to surround their attacker in a tight spear faster than it can kill them or mark their hive for invasion once they've captured their assailant the workers begin beating their wings generating friction and raising the temperature and amount of co2 around the Hornet temperatures can climb as high as 46 degrees Celsius which quickly roasts the Hornet to death but leaves the bees relatively unscathed but Western honeybees are still left defenseless so what can we do British Columbia's Department of Agriculture has plans to set Hornet traps around the province to curb the spread of this invasive species using a sheet of sticky cardboard around a small cut in a tree the BC government hopes to lure the giant Hornets to their adhesive doom however the impact of all traps may not be felt just by these intruders but by all insects species many scared individuals have been setting out traps using orange juice and rice wine which unfortunately also attracts bees so traps might end up harming the local ecosystem rather than protecting it all invasive species have the potential to become serious problems in the ecosystems they're introduced to the cane toad was purposefully brought to Australian shores to deal with pests but in the end they became worse than the problem itself it's yet to be seen if these Hornets could survive in North American winter if they can then it would be possible for them to establish a foothold in Canada and the United States entrenching themselves into the local ecosystem and damaging local biodiversity that being said experts hope to contain the species until the weather cools off and most believe that the frost should wipe them out but until then if we ever find ourselves face to face with one we'll just have to remember if stings have been nil then simply stand still but if stingers have stun get ready to run I'm sorry did we miss something yeah sort of a few weeks ago we hit our 500k milestone and some of you decided to bring the celebration to us I don't think I alone have the words to express what this means to us but I'm not alone and I never really have been thank you everyone you're all beautiful I just want to say thanks everyone you're all breathtaking is it just me or is this art like real good no girl you're right our fans are some talented people hey everybody Smith chill endo no I'm gonna say this with my voice I guess but thanks to every one of you you're great and we appreciate it thank you to everyone who made this possible and for always staying curious you guys are just awesome here's to 1 million thank you from all of us so do you have somewhere you need to be or no actually I'm not too sure what we're supposed to do well normally we wait for the outro music and then the episode just sort of stopped cool okay dad [Music] [Music]

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Views: 1,563,779

Rating: 4.9197392 out of 5

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Id: J74fuB88qS0

Length: 12min 32sec (752 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 17 2020