Wasps are hard-working tiny creatures that never cease to amaze us! Nature has some strange ways of creating intricate shapes, and wasps nests are a great example of this.
Paper wasps build their nests by chewing wood, which combined with their saliva turns into a solid construction.
Mattia Menchetti, a biology student from the University of Florence started studying wasps and conducted an experiment in which she gave wasps colored paper. At first, she started with yellow paper and gradually added more colors, so she could observe the wasps creating rainbow-colored nests. The outcome is truly fascinating, and she shared it with the public through Notula Zoologica.
This is a great example of how non-invasive human interference with the insect world can lead to fascinating results, which can be then used to learn more about the life of these creatures.
Another similar experiment from France conducted in 2012, showed that bees that collected sugar from M&Ms found in a waste plant nearby produced green and blue honey. To learn more about Mattia’s experiment, watch the video presentation and take a look at the pictures documenting the process of building the rainbow-nests.
So awesome.
Absolutely amazing.
i wonder if given choice of colors if they would build using certain colors or randomly ? can they see visual colors or in uv or infra red ?
It’s amazing work.
Are the dyes in the colored paper safe for the wasps? That would be my question.
Amazing insects!