Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, though the Asian
giant hornets have certainly lived it up, recently.
What is the buzz about them, again? Firstly, they are some
of the biggest wasps of the modern time, about 2 inches in length (aka 5 cm),
and have a quarter inch stinger (0.625 cm or 62.5 mm, more than half a
centimeter long) with venom glands to match. Their stingers can penetrate a
standard bee-keeper’s suit and according to Coyote Peterson, the main host of
the ‘Brave Wilderness’ show, their sting is second only to the executioner
wasp; since Coyote was stung by both the giant hornet and the executioner wasp
personally, he knows what he’s talking about.
Secondly, the worst thing about the giant hornets is that
they kill honeybees – all that they come across and can devastate a full hive
in a matter of hours. The Asian subspecies of honeybees has developed an
ingenious way of killing giant hornet scouts, as we’ve talked about it the last
time – they envelop the giant wasps in ‘bee balls’ and cook them alive, but the
European and North American subspecies of honeybee haven’t evolved this method
of anti-hornet defense yet, so their fates are up in the air. What next?
…Well, the fact that Canada, i.e. the province of British
Columbia had had an Asian giant hornet problem since last year, (2019), is. Somehow,
the rest of Canada as well as USA had blithely ignored it, and this was before COVID-19, so real life sucks, see
the disclaimer. Until the thunder rumbles, the peasant shall not cross himself,
goes the Russian proverb and it looks as if North America is proving this
saying right.
…Of course it can be pointed out that if the giant hornets
have existed in North America for several months now and hadn’t brought its’
ecosystems to a crashing halt, (it isn’t admitted very regularly, but the
collapse of the honeybee population world-wide is one of recurring nightmares
of the Western scientists), it means… exactly what?
I won’t tell a lie – I have no idea just how bad the
appearance of the Asian giant hornet will be in North America, but what else
worried people about them, is that like the rest of social wasps, only the
young queens, (aka breeding females) survive winters, and the rest of the nest
perishes, regardless of what the weather is. Actually, this happens to most of
honeybee cousins, including some other social bee species, such as the
bumblebees; most species of ants, however, keep on living through the winter,
even though their way of life is more similar to the wasps’ than the bees’… but
we digress.
The point is that if Asian giant hornets arrived in Canada
in 2019, they could have had several months to build a breeding nest, release
new, fertilized and fertile females, and die during the last winter – but the
new queens survived and started new colonies… in theory. So far, what I have
seen between the lines of all the reports is that the evidence of an Asian
giant hornet presence in North America in 2020 is kind of sketchy – yes, it’s
bad, a couple of devastated bee hives at least – but proportionally? It is not that bad, praise Celestia (from the MLP:
FiM franchise) for small miracles.
...So far, no live Asian giant hornets were
caught in Canada or the U.S. – not on camera and not literally, and these are
big, colorful insects that don’t do subtlety, so surely if they’d established
themselves in the New World someone would’ve seen them by now, (or get stung by
them?)? Apparently not, which makes me wonder, again, if someone is not making
a mountain out of a molehill instead. Anything else?
I admit that I wanted to talk about frogs today, because we
have talked about newts (and salamanders earlier). However, then the Asian
giant hornets sidetracked me again, but the truth is, they’re a part of
Anurans, aka the tailless amphibians, (we’re talking about mature animals,
their larvae, the tadpoles, don’t count), and as such, frogs and toads live all
over the world, except for the Arctic, the Antarctic, and a few other places,
such as northern Africa, (aka the Sahara desert). To a scientist, only the
amphibians of the genus Rana are ‘true’
frogs, (and ‘true’ toads belong to the genus
Bufo); to a layperson… well…
Let us specify by the fact that we are talking the Northern
Hemisphere – Eurasia and North America – only. In the tropics, the anurans come
in fully different colors and genera, but in the Northern Hemisphere, well… the
frogs, as a rule, are smooth skinned, while the toads are bumpy, ‘warty’, and
have a pair of parotid glands at the back of their head – they’re poisonous,
while frogs aren’t. Well, the frogs of the genus Rana are not, (one of those species is officially called the edible
frog), whereas the poison dart frogs are another matter, of course.
…The coloration is not a very reliable means of telling the
two groups apart – there are green colored frogs, but there are also more
mottled species, which live further away from the water’s edge, rather as how
toads do, but they are shyer than the toads are, and out of the two groups,
frogs are the better jumpers, because their hind legs are longer and stronger.
Finally, there’re are their eggs – both groups of tailless
amphibians lay them in spring, but the frogs’ eggs just float in a big clump,
while toads’ eggs are laid in sticky ribbons around underwater plants. Their
tadpoles, ecologically speaking, are similar though, and, of course, the adults
of both groups are quite similar too, (even though this group of amphibians
have appeared back in Jurassic, featured in the second episode of ‘Walking with
Dinosaurs’, for example – as allosaurs hunted sauropods, the first frogs and
toads were already jumping away from their thundering tread. Puts things in perspective,
you know). Hence the often confusion of the two amphibian groups by humans…
Well, this is it for now. I will see you all soon!
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