The Column #61

Wasp Hound

After what seems like a summer of endless rain and grey skies, it was a sheer pleasure to sit in the garden over the bank holiday weekend and enjoy the sunshine. After tentative skyward glances looking for rainclouds, we decided to throw caution to the wind, or rather the gentle breeze, and venture outside with some cold drinks. Sitting in the sunshine, absorbing its glow while sipping a cold drink, it was hard to imagine what could possibly spoil the occasion. However, we had not counted on the one thing which is the bane of any British summer’s day; the common wasp!

Common wasp

The lack of warm weather this summer has left the majority of us fairly wasp-free. The one true positive to emerge from a summer in greyscale is the lack of these yellow and orange pests, persistently pinging across the patio, invading every drink and meal with their pathetic buzzing and irritating sting. Aside from its distinctive colour, the wasp has very little going for it. It is intensely disliked by mankind, its diet consists largely of bugs and leftovers, and it spends most of its life hanging around litter bins. The one question everybody asks about wasps is ‘what is the point in their existence?’

People respect the bumble bee because it produces delicious honey for consumption, and also because it is crippled by its ability to sting only once, thus vesting its eventual victim with a misplaced sense of importance. The typical outcry being ‘that bee gave its life in order to cause me pain; I feel so special’. Wasps, on the other hand, do not produce anything directly edible by humans, nor are they an accepted delicacy (although some people do fry the larvae in butter). Therefore, from our human-centric point of view, it would be much appreciated if the wasp joined the dodo in extinction.

Crop field

However, ask any farmer about wasps, and provided you can distract their attention from cloning their flock for long enough, they will tell you that wasps are an invaluable form of crop defence. Wasps feed on and kill large numbers of pests that are present in crop fields, preventing the destruction of expensive produce and saving the farmer from having to routinely spray the land. This ensures that farmers have more time to work on creating a 21st century neurodegenerative disease (in the mould of BSE) by feeding the minced remains of failed clones to that of their successful counterparts. Mad Clone Disease will soon be with us.

In addition to their usefulness as a pseudo-pesticide, wasps also posses a fantastic sense of smell. Scientific research at the University of Georgia (by Joe Lewis and Glen Rains) has proven that, with minimal training, wasps can be taught to identify specific smells and respond to them. The wasps are fed sugary water and introduced to a specific smell for ten seconds at the same time. This process is repeated twice, building up the association in the wasps’ brains between the pleasure of the sugary water and the smell, at which point they are fully trained. It really is that simple. So far, the research has failed to uncover any smell that the wasps can’t detect.

Cheap labour

This form of cheap, easily-trained labour is as yet a vast untapped market of talent. Wasps could be used to detect explosives and toxic weapons by the Armed Forces; the Police could use them to sniff out a particular burglar; airport security could use them to detect drugs in luggage; farmers could use them to catch crop fungi in the early stages; doctors could apparently even use them to detect deadly diseases such as cancer in the future. ‘They are an incredibly versatile type of system. We've really just scratched the surface,’ said Glen Rains, a biological engineer at the University of Georgia.

The wasps are trained to detect a specific substance and then placed within a container (called the Wasp Hound) that has air holes in the top. The container is moved towards areas of suspicion/interest while a small fan draws the air in, and if the wasps detect the smell, they swam around the holes. A small web-cam is attached to a computer that monitors the wasps’ behaviour and alerts the operator when the wasps detect something. This method of using wasps is cheap, reliable and according to University of Georgia entomologist, Joe Lewis, ‘You can produce them (wasps) by the thousands. They are real inexpensive, and you can train them in a matter of minutes.’

Wasp Hound

The Wasp Hound is a fantastic scientific achievement, however it does have its disadvantages at present. The close proximity required in order for the wasps to detect a smell means that the operator would more or less need to be standing on a bomb or chemical weapon in order to identify it. Also, wasps can only provide 48 hours active service before they have to be released, so vast wasp training farms would be required in order to provide a steady supply for use in airports or similar venues. Research is ongoing however, so one day a caged wasp may check your baggage before you fly. Nature is not without a sense of irony.

If a wasp can be trained to respond to a smell positively, then surely the reverse is possible, where wasps could be trained to avoid a certain smell. With this in mind, a person could farm and train their own army of wasps for home security and personal defence. The wasps would be exposed to the smell of their owner while being forced to listen to the music of Susan Boyle (or something equally pain-inducing), thus meaning that they learn to fear that smell and avoid it. The owner could then unleash a swarm of these trained wasps onto a burglar or attacker, safe in the knowledge that the wasps won’t attack him/her due to the training. Forget all about the dog; the wasp is man’s new best friend.