Aggression
The common wasp will, like bees, aggressively defend its nest. But unlike bees, which die after stinging, the common wasp can sting multiple times. This makes its sting viable for personal defense when away from the colony, and the common wasp is therefore more prone to stinging. However, it will usually not sting without being provoked by sudden movement or other violent behavior.
Research indicates the wasps use odor to identify and attack rival wasps from other colonies, and nest odor frequently changes. V. vulgaris wasps have been observed aggressively competing with honey bees for the honeydew secreted by the scale insect Ultracoelostoma brittini in New Zealand's South Island black beech forests.
Read more about this topic: Vespula Vulgaris
Famous quotes containing the word aggression:
“In any case, raw aggression is thought to be the peculiar province of men, as nurturing is the peculiar province of women.... The psychologist Erik Erikson discovered that, while little girls playing with blocks generally create pleasant interior spaces and attractive entrances, little boys are inclined to pile up the blocks as high as they can and then watch them fall down: “the contemplation of ruins,” Erikson observes, “is a masculine specialty.””
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“[Research has found that] ... parents whose children were “baby altruists” by two years firmly prohibited any child aggression against others. Adults not only restated their rule against hitting, for example, but they let the little one know that they would not tolerate the child hurting another.”
—Alice Sterling Honig (20th century)
“Cinema is the culmination of the obsessive, mechanistic male drive in western culture. The movie projector is an Apollonian straightshooter, demonstrating the link between aggression and art. Every pictorial framing is a ritual limitation, a barred precinct.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)