Paper Wasp nest I recently spotted after the foliage died down. Suspect it may have been Baldfaced Hornets. Never noticed it last summer even though I walked by within 20 feet a zillion times...

#PaperWasps #BaldfaceHornet #Nature

Watching our first significant rain chance in months passing to the west, as usual.

#drought #ClimateChange #climateAnxiety #LongCovid #PaperWasps #ApocalypseGardening

https://open.substack.com/pub/madpiratemayday/p/please-no-i-didnt-order-the-usual?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

"nothing so far has eased my uncertainty:
paper wasp pool parties, this infernal summer, the follow-up appointment, and a bunch of things I partially read about long covid"

I wrote this last week, and didn't post. There are links and descriptions of long covid articles I'm probably still reading after a short post about wasps, frustration, healing, and uncertainty.
#summer #longcovid #research #paperwasps #

https://open.substack.com/pub/madpiratemayday/p/nothing-so-far-has-eased-my-uncertainty?r=25ny58&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Can a #wasp really have logical thoughts? YES! Research on honeybees showed they don’t seem capable of logical reasoning, but a new study at the University of Michigan suggests that the same may not be true of paper wasps. The work, which was published in Biology Letters, reveals that #paperwasps can logically deduce facts based on their own observations!

For their test, the research team used color pairs that the insects had to familiarize themselves with. One of the colors provided a small electrical zap when touched while the other did not. The wasps rapidly learned which color wasn't safe” & which was not.

Then, they introduced a new pair of colors for the wasps to learn. The colors were intermixed into novel pairs that hadn't been presented before. The wasps showed an ability to identify safe colors in these new contexts, showing they'd learned what was safe & used that knowledge even when faced w/a new variable.

#CrittersOfMastodon #think #logic

https://bgr.com/science/wasp-logic-reasoning-study/

I’ve been watching this nest for months, since the falling leaves first exposed its presence. So exciting to see the internal structure being revealed (although the initial smooth ball was very attractive as well).

#photography #PaperWasps #hornets #nest #entomology