• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

These Wasps Joust With Their Genitals To Keep Predators At Bay

December 19, 2022 by Deborah Bloomfield

Describing your junk as a weapon is a pretty undesirable trait in humans, but for wasps, it could be a lifesaving adaptation. New research has found that the mason wasp got pretty creative when it cooked up its genital structures, evolving to possess spiky bits that double up as a defense mechanism against predators like frogs.

The mason wasp, Anterhynchium gibbifrons, revealed its unique talents by doing what wasps do best: stinging someone. Co-author on a new paper, Misaki Tsujii of Kobe University, Japan, was studying these insects when one evidently got cross and “stung” her. This was unusual, however, because the wasp was a male.

Advertisement

Stingers developed from ovipositors in the ancestors of modern wasps and bees, so only female insects have them. This means that if you’re enjoying a picnic and get injected by something winged and venomous, it’s usually a female. While some males have pseudostingers for clout, they weren’t thought to cause an actual sting, which is why Tsujii’s experience was odd.

can male wasps sting

Genitals are a rather spiky business for mason wasps. Image credit: Current Biology Sugiura

“Surprisingly, the male ‘sting’ caused a pricking pain,” said co-author Shinji Sugiura in a statement seen by IFLScience. “Based on her experience and observations, I hypothesized that the male genitalia of A. gibbifrons function as an anti-predator defense.”

To find out just how deadly the males’ “weapons” were, the researchers pitted them against tree frogs to see if and how they employed their spiky genitals against predators. The predator and prey were put into an arena together to see if the frogs tried to attack, and how successful they were. The rounds revealed that frogs had to spit out genital-wielding males in over a third of the attempts to swallow them, and that they were being repeatedly “stung” with their genitalia as it happened. 

Removal of the wasps’ genitals resulted in them being gobbled up, demonstrating the significance of their junk in avoiding being eaten. The genital spikes are known as pseudostings, but until now it wasn’t known that they played a big role in predation events.

“The genitalia of male animals have frequently been studied in terms of conspecific interactions between males and females but rarely in terms of prey-predator interactions,” concluded Sugiura. “This study highlights the significance of male genitalia as an anti-predator defense and opens a new perspective for understanding the ecological role of male genitalia in animals.”

The study was published in Current Biology.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Fed officials say tapering could still get started this year
  2. Australia says will be patient on rebuilding ties with France
  3. Golf-Rahm positive he can match Ballesteros with third Spanish Open win
  4. GM aims to double revenues by 2030 as it drives to pass Tesla

Source Link: These Wasps Joust With Their Genitals To Keep Predators At Bay

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • The World’s Oldest Known Cake Is Over 4,000 Years Old, And It Sounds Pretty Delicious
  • An Ominous Haze Lurks Over The Deadliest Volcano In US, But USGS Says A Repeat Of 1980 Isn’t Coming
  • Hayabusa2’s Target Asteroid Is 4 Times Smaller Than Thought – Can It Still Touch Down On It?
  • In 2011, Slavc The Wolf Journeyed 1,000 Miles To Begin Verona’s First Wolf Pack In 100 Years
  • Anyone Know What These Marine “Y-Larvae” Grow Into? Because Scientists Have No Clue
  • C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) Closest Earth Approach Is Next Month – Will We See It With The Naked Eye?
  • In 2013, A Volcanic Eruption Wiped Out Life On This Remote Island. Then, Somehow, Plants Reemerged
  • 1-Year-Old Orca Takes Out A Big Fat Seal In This Award-Winning – And Extremely Badass – Photo
  • Saturn And Neptune Will Reach Their Brightest In Days – And Look For Saturn’s Temporary Beauty Spot
  • Reindeer Bring A Gift Greater Than Any Of Santa’s – Hope Of A Stable Climate
  • If Deep-Sea Pressure Can Crush A Human Body, How Do Deep-Sea Creatures Not Implode?
  • Meet Ned: The Lonely Lefty Snail Looking For Love
  • “America Will Lead The Next Giant Leap”: NASA Announces New Milestone In Hunt For Exoplanets
  • What Did Neanderthals Sound Like?
  • One Star System Could Soon Dazzle Us Twice With Nova And Supernova Explosions
  • Unethical Experiments: When Scientists Really Should Have Stopped What They Were Doing Immediately
  • The First Humans Were Hunted By Leopards And Weren’t The Apex Predators We Thought They Were
  • Earth’s Passage Through The Galaxy Might Be Written In Its Rocks
  • What Is An Einstein Cross – And Why Is The Latest One Such A Unique Find?
  • If We Found Life On Mars, What Would That Mean For The Fermi Paradox And The Great Filter?
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version