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10 October 2009

The Birds and the Bees and the Hornets

I went to work today, that wonderful place that makes you smell bad and feel fattened and want to sleep. While at work, I had a break, that wonderful time at work where you get to sit on a disgusting-looking couch and have policies shout at you from the walls and watch television without a choice of which show is on. Some days, the shows are really very awful. This awful sort of show usually means the channel is on Much.
Fortunately, today I had no such luck. The channel was National Geographic, which you may expect to be boring due to its nerdy reputation, but it was really rather fascinating! The show was Deadliest Animals on Earth or something like that and they showed giant hornets, some kind of rhino, crocodiles and polar bears. It was all very interesting, but what struck me the most was the hornets.
Perhaps it struck me because it made me think of Mugs, perhaps it struck me simply because it was the first creature shown. Perhaps it was both of those things. Mostly I think it struck me because of the organization and nature of the things. These bugs are the size of a deck of cards. Cards, for goodness' sake! Humongous. Hence the name giant hornet. It was so intriguing to see the way they did everything. Everything is so logical and sensible and intelligent. The way they create the little hexagonal safe places for the young, it's insane! How do they know a hexagon is what they need? And it showed one of them killing a praying mantis. It like crawled up to the mantis and jumped on it and then decapitated it with its pincers. It was madness! Then it chewed up the body into little balls of praying mantis wonder and flew it home to the babies to feed them. These hornets can kill a whole colony of bees in three hours and proceed to feed the carcasses to their young. Three hours, and a whole colony is out the window! It's insane! And the hornets look like monsters next to the bees! The bees look like infants! These hornets can kill a human. Their venom attacks your nervous system. One colony lasts for six months, and kills around 40 humans during that time. Insane (woah, déja vu).
It's all so perfect and wonderful. They know exactly what they need to feed the youngins, and they know it's important to feed them well because they can't do it on their own and the colony needs them to sustain itself. They make so much sense. They know who matters and they are selfless and live to make their world of gigantic wasps functional for them. We could learn from them.

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