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Asian Giant Hornets Kill 42 People In China, Injure Over 1,500
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Madison Park and Dayu Zhang report on CNN that swarms of aggressive hornets are inflicting a deadly toll in a central China killing 42 people and injuring 1,675 people in three cities in Shaanxi province since July. Government authorities say these attacks are from a particularly venomous species, the world's largest hornet, known as the Asian giant hornet or vespa mandarinia. The giant hornet extends about 3.5 to 3.9 centimeters in length, roughly the size of a human thumb and has an orange head with a black tooth used for burrowing. The Asian giant hornet is intensely predatory; it hunts medium- to large-sized insects, such as bees, other hornet species, and mantises. The pain of the Asian Giant Hornet is described as a hot nail piercing the skin and lasts about 4 hours with instant swelling. One victim told local media earlier this month that "the more you run, the more they want to chase you." Some victims described being chased about 200 meters (656 feet) by a swarm. Local authorities have deployed thousands of police officers and locals to destroy about 710 hives but ""It's very difficult to prevent the attacks because hornet nests are usually in hidden sites," says Shunichi Makino, director general of the Hokkaido Research Center for Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute. Makino, who specializes in entomology, warned that the sting from an Asian giant hornet was severe compared with those of other insects. "The venom of an Asian giant hornet is very special compared with other hornets or yellow jackets," says Makino. "The neurotoxin — especially to mammals including humans — it's a special brand of venom." Asian Giant Hornets have been spotted in the United States."
What's next? Carnivorous rabbits?
I will openly admit, if I was attacked by those giant death machines I would move to another continent. Ain't nobody got time for that!
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
First time I read this headline, I missed that 'hornets' was plural and imagined a single, huge hornet on a murdering rampage across China.
Proof that even China has had enough of the H1B(ee)s.
Ooh, life imitates art!
Be afraid...
http://imgur.com/TTrA9KS ... be very afraid.
Badgers eat hornets. We will ship you a box of angry badgers for to expose to giantism causing Fukashima radiation. If I have learned anything from my childhood, its that the solution to giant monsters is more giant monsters.
that's got to sting.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.
Stinging people. Hornets love it. But it kills them...or is that bees?
The Asian giant hornet is intensely predatory; it hunts medium- to large-sized insects, such as bees, other hornet species, and mantises.
And now since their food supply is rapidly disappearing due to the devastating global declines in bee, hornet, and praying mantis populations, the giant hornets are preying on the only plentiful sources of food they have left: humans!!
I'll bet the FA18D and E Super Hornets have killed more than that in Iraq and Afghanistan
China is being overrun by killer giant hornets, and the only thing that can stop them is a government created sharknado. The sharknado then starts eating people after they eat all the hornets.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Sounds like the perfect pet for ex-wives, lawyers, patent trolls and politicians
Before you get worried, keep in mind there's little danger here even if you are in China. There have been 1500 injuries, but keep in mind this is a country of 1.3 billion people. That's 0.0011% of the population. 5.1 people per 100,000 in china die from traffic related accidents, which comes to 0.0051%.
You are five times more likely to be killed by a car than you are to get STUNG by one of these things, assuming you are in China.
Don't panic. Unless my numbers are off, which is entirely possible... wait, carry the seven...
Part of me can't wait until I can purchase a bunch of tiny flying robots and hunt bee/hornet nests on my property from the safety of my living room.
4 cm across? I say use birdshot on the swarms. Just watch your backdrop.
To protect against hornets, carry around a vacuum cleaner. Nothing can live inside a vacuum.
Uh huh. And you believe your *inset nation* will handle things any differently (minus the guns)? And honestly now, guns... for dealing with thousands of tiny insects... Do try to keep your imagination in check good sir/madame. No one is that dumb.
Imagine if Belushi were still alive...
Another reporter slept through science class and failed to remember the concept of significant digits.
Clearly a witness who claimed to have run 200 meters was estimating, so there's at best one significant digit. It would have been much better to use "(over 600 feet)" as the conversion. Or why not go with "(656 feet, 2 and 1/64 inches)?"
Does that make me just as bad as people who don't care about the harm we are doing, steadily destroying more and more habitats for creatures of all types?
I do admire the Chinese.Just think - being chased by a deadly hornet and still measuring the distance run with such accuracy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We use flame throwers to fight insects. At least that's how we fight killer bees, it's quite effective.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Let the hornets be, working as intended. Keeping humans out of places they should not be and culling an unfortunate few who were to stupid to stay away from the agressive critters. Nature has a rule that works 9 time out of 10... If it is bright, flashy, and does not give a single frack about your presence. .. stay away or face the consequences.
Night Of the Lepus
Carnivorous rabbits at your service.
You WASP!
Jesus Christ, that's horror movie territory!
i bet these hornets are more of a worry in canada than in the united states.
no matter where they hide in the united states, unless it's death valley, people are going to run into them and report the fact that bugs the size of their head have been spotted.
if these go into canada and can survive there, they can easily find plenty of space to reproduce for many generations unnoticed and undisturbed. by the time they're encountered they'll be numerous.
i imagine they will move into the giant beaver dam that's up there. and eat all the beavers.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
These things are huge...
http://www.vespa-crabro.de/vespa-mandarinia.htm
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
And honestly now, guns... for dealing with thousands of tiny insects...
TINY??? Have you seen one of those things? They're fuckin' huge!!!
Do try to keep your imagination in check good sir/madame. No one is that dumb.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
These sound like real-world Tracker Jackers!
Killing 42 people in China is like killing, what, 10 people in the US? We probably kill that many people every day from slipping in the bathtub. My understanding of this from other articles is that the attacks have occurred because there is new development in the hornet's area. That means this is likely a transient effect as the environment will be modified by the new development. In 10 years the hornet attacks will be a distant memory, unbelievable folklore told by old timers in the developed area.
giant killer bee
30 Giant Hornets v 30,000 Bees
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ1eAM8CChc
Sounds like the same kind of hornets that Matt Inman ran into. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/running5
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
> And you believe your *inset nation* will handle things any differently (minus the guns)?
Yes, I sincerely do. America has a massively irrational fear-button that doesn't ever seem to get desensitised, no matter how often the media and government press it. If the mainstream US media decides to pick this hornet thing up and run with it, you'll see most or all of the following:
- Mass-persecution of harmless bees, wasps, flies and anything else that might be mistaken for a killer hornet of doom. ...
- Idiots panic-buying houseloads of shit for no reason (default american reaction to any major event: Quick! Buy Shit!)
- People barricading themselves in their homes/ cars
- suffocating inside their homes/cars because by "hornet-proofing" a space they made it airtight
- accidentally poisoning themselves with insecticides in improperly-ventilated areas,
- Local governments / school boards/ uni campuses etc passing asinine hornet-related local ordinances
- shooting/ killing one another in hornet-related disputes
- Crashing their cars because they thought the bee in the car with them was a killer hornet.
- shooting at (real or imagined - but almost certainly the latter) killer-hornet nests
- Accidentally setting fire to their homes/ neighbourhoods while trying to burn/ smoke out (real or imagined) killer-hornet nests
- Attempting to shoot at (real or imagined) hornets (leading to accidental shootings of people, pets and livestock)
- deliberately killing themselves out of sheer terror (to be fair, these people tend to be genuinely mentally ill and would have found some other excuse sooner or later)
- shooting at (real or imagined) Chinese people (because obviously this whole hornet thing is their dirty commie terrorist fascist fault)
keyboard cat is going to have a hell of a job keeping up with all this.
>guns... for dealing with thousands of tiny insects....No one is that dumb.
I wasn't really suggesting that they'd buy the ammo to shoot the hornets, just that the mdeia escalates every scare-story up to the level of "imminent apocolypse" and that provokes americans to empty the supermarketrs of canned food and ammo. That said, never underestimate the dumb: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=shoot+at+wasps+with+gun
Beedrill.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
All I can think of is the size of exoskeleton life that used to exist on this planet (some of which when the oxygen levels were higher).
http://listverse.com/2013/01/14/10-prehistoric-bugs-that-could-seriously-mess-you-up/
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
Reports indicate the Asian Giant Hornet was briefly spotted in Australia. Upon arriving the colony looked around, said "Fuck me...", and promptly returned to Asia.
Nah, don't worry about it. Concern for species is irrelevant. Before you are dead we will have resurrected recently dead species like dodo and mammoths and teeny horses. We will be able to resurrect frozen neanderthals if we have some.
And before your kids are dead, we will have complete life DNA simulation built into computers.
All worries are silly in a historical context.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Does that make me just as bad as people who don't care about the harm we are doing...
No, it makes you a wasp. The other AC had it right.
Go to youtube and watch "30 hornets vs 30000 bees".
These things don't mess around! By the way, there is a defense...*japanese* honeybees (not the more common *european* honeybees) have a really awesome way of taking down these guys. Basically, a few dozen bees swarm the hornet and flap their little bee-wings like mad. This increases the temperature to around 118 degrees fahrenheit. This is hot enough to kill the hornet, but still a few degrees shy of what will kill the bees. Its awesome to watch, there are a few youtube videos of this as well.
Of course, even if some of these creatures are in the US, the chances of encountering one - much less being killed by one - will be less than that of being hit by lightning while clutching a winning lottery ticket
Some people probably thought the same thing when the first Asian carp and the first Asian ladybug were spotted on this continent.
Man those things are bad!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
We need to get some strain of the Japanese Honey Bee over here. I watched a program about these hornets a few years back. Apparently, they release a pheromone that makes them appear as bees. They send out scouts who walk about the Bee hive undetected. She goes back, informs her sisters, they show up and murder everyone.
However, the Japanese Honey Bee doesn't fall for their ruse. They just chill until the scout gets deep into the hive. Then, they all pounce on her, surrounding her and vibrating. The bees can withstand 1 to 2 more degrees of heat that the hornet. They basically cook her, so she never returns to tattle to her sister hornets... keeping the hive safe.
A Japanese guy got stung in the face about 34 times while mowing his lawn over 300 yards away. His wife said his face basically melted, where she couldn't recognize him. He died about a half an hour after being attacked. Scary shit.
Posting this as anon, because its been so long I forget the details for my 6 digit uin.
We have asian hornets already, last summer they nested in a tree in my garden. The local firebrigade have an obligation to come and and kill the nest if you contact them as they are a invasive species with special requirements.
I called the pompiers, and they came out, but they had no means of reaching the height of the nest that they could get access to (200ft up in my boggy garden), so they went away with talk of poisen delivered by specialist lifting contractors at thousands of euro in costs to me.
That night, the nest mysteriously exploded and fell from its high branch, and I called them back out to deal with the nest on the floor and they came out in suits and applied poisen and took the nest away and some of the hornets and lavae for the local school to do a feature on the species.
Yes they are as big as they say, and they sound like a small drone when flying and it hurt lots when I got stung. And they take some killing, but generally one or two wont do more than annoy you at your bbq. As a species they like to nest as high as possible, so most of the time disturbing the nest means felling a tree or doing similar, its not easy to come in to close contact with the nest.
Probably the biggest indicator is the sudden absence of yellowjackets and bee's in the area. In fact we had a waspinator decoy nest to keep yellojackets down at the bbq area and it seemed to attract the asians looking for a nest to pillage for food.
Where they are a real danger is in a urban environment as they like to live in sewers and other areas that they will come into close contact with humans. Im lucky in that this is very rural so we weren't forced into close quarters with them in this way.
They are plotting a line across france as they advance, killing bee hives and causing destruction in their path, within a year or two they will be in the uk, and its only a matter of time they get everywhere.
So summary, theyre a pain in the ass, but its nto the end of the world and specialists are already equipped to eradicate a nest when discovered, you just dont have to be stupid and pour a can of gas over it or something while theyre awake.
Leela: "What's the mission?"
Farnsworth: "Collecting honey. Ordinary honey."
Leela: "That doesn't sound so dangerous."
Farnsworth: "This is no ordinary honey! It's produced by vicious space bees. A single sting of their hideous neurotoxin can cause instant death!"
Hermes: "And that's if you're not allergic! You don't wanna know what happens then, oh no no, God no."
Farnsworth: "Your insides with boil out of your eye sockets like a science fair volcano!"
Hermes: "I didn't want to know!" *cries*
Anti-American troll is trollish. But not entirely incorrect.
Ok, we build this giant wooden badger ...
Last summer I had a huge colony of yellow jackets living in my wall. Maybe not as exciting as killer hornets, but still terrifying to me at the time.
The first sign was coming home to find dozens of yellow jackets in my basement, which congregated around the light after I turned it on. I caught most of them with a butterfly net. Next day, same thing. Two days later, they worked their way up to my bedroom, apparently having eaten through the radiator pipe seal. I focused on my bedroom, catching maybe a dozen per day and increasing. They flew out of my printer when I printed a page. Flying insect killer would only kill the ones I hit directly. I started to feel like I was living in the kind of nightmare you see in movies.
I found their entrance hole in the wall outside the house, with hundreds coming in and out. I tried spraying hornet/wasp killer deep into the hole, but no luck. I was warned against sealing the hole, since they would escape into the house, chewing their way through the wall if necessary.
Being a cheapskate, I didn't want to an exterminator to rip open the wall, with repairs to the wall that might have cost thousands, as was suggested. Instead, I ran a shop vac hose next to the opening, sucking up any wasp that tried to enter or leave the hole. After 24 hours, the shop vac was 1/3 full of solid wasp mass, maybe 10000 of them as a guesstimate. I left it running for a week, each day finding fewer. Then I ran it during the day every couple of days, finding less each time.
After a month or so, a batch of new queens and drones came out among the workers, and eventually nothing. There might have been 50K, maybe even 100K total. It was interesting how the queens were very robust and hard to kill compared to the smaller workers.
Close to wintertime, when I was pretty sure they were all gone, I sealed the hole with putty. I read they don't often return to the same nest, and luckily there was no sign of them this year.
Amazingly, I wasn't stung even once throughout all of this, although I was very careful, donning a raincoat, gloves, and a butterfly net over my head in the beginning. On the other hand, my GF was stung a couple of times on her face at her house, causing lots of pain and swelling, just by casually walking next to a bush where they had a nest in the ground.
These critters are big and vicious. To make them go away, you need something even bigger and even more insanely vicious. The obvious solution is cloud seeding, to create a series of Sharknados to eliminate the wasps. and Kardashians.
Of course, even if some of these creatures are in the US, the chances of encountering one - much less being killed by one - will be less than that of being hit by lightning while clutching a winning lottery ticket...
For now. But people could have said that same thing about fire ants, crazy ants, Africanized bees, and most definitely the Asian tiger mosquito which is pretty much everywhere now. There's no reason to believe if there's a breeding pair that they won't flourish as well here.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Asian Giant Hornets have been spotted in the United States.
No, that's okay. I don't need to sleep... ever again.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
Yeah... that looks like a tall glass of NOPE!
Did anyone else have an immediate image of choosing between a machine gun (ineffective) and a flame thrower (effective) on reading the summary?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
So, you are saying Congress was infected by giant foreign ignoramuses who crave Klieg lights and emit copious amounts of hot air. We're doomed!!!
Who manufactures tennis rackets, WD-40 and lighters over there?
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
We've encountered these bugs before, though they're coloured differently. My favourite way of killing them was with flame.
What are you, a little kid?
People, we need to start eating insects!
Oh my God, then, it's important!
Of course ... the chances of ... being killed by one ....
Some people probably thought the same thing when the first Asian carp and the first Asian ladybug were spotted on this continent.
And even now, the chances of getting killed by an Asian carp or ladybug are a million to one, but still, they come.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
I first noticed these last summer outside my house about 30 miles west of Washington, DC in the northern VA suburbs. For about a month, I would see one every couple of days hurling itself into the porch light at night. I initally thought it was a locust because of its size and impact sound. Only when it gave up and buzzed away did hear the menacing sound of its wings, which was nothing like the familar clatter of a locust/cicada. Then one night while working on my car in the garage, four of them came in -- fortunately not at the same time! Each time, one of them would come tearing in through the open garage door and attack each of the 6 overhead lights like mad. It would pause for about 10 seconds after each 3-minute light-bulb battle.
These fuckers are relentless. On the first one, I wasn't sure what I was dealing with, so I assumed I could easily dispatch it and be about my car repair. I grabbed my hornet spray and cautiously waited for it to land. As soon as I got within 10 feet of where it paused, the damned thing came after me dive-bomber style. Thanks to a violent fit of crouching, ducking, and infant-fall-reflex, I didn't get nailed. This happened at least 6 more times before I finally hit it with the spray...BUT THEN IT WAS JUST MAD. It went absolutely berzerk and did its pelting attack routine against everything in my garage. Again, I hit it after 3 minutes when it landed. It finally ended up on the ground, but was still trying to fly, so I emptied a quarter of the spray can, which finally got it.
After enjoying a brief sense of accomplishment from a 20-minute battle with mother nature, I got back to work....for 5 minutes...before another one came in. I HATE these things. I spent 90 minutes that night duking it out with them. I killed another one a week ago but I have no clue where the nest might be. And I don't want to know. I've warned my kids about them, but I know it's only a matter of time. I just hope it doesn't go badly.
...when everything is a crime, everyone is a criminal.
I'm leaving Illinois - fuck that. I've seen too many horrendous insects on the internet today. Check out this Tarantula Hawk Wasp: http://i1089.photobucket.com/albums/i343/OldSchoolTHF/TarantulaHawk_zps57e48052.gif
They still aren't very likely to kill you...
Never underestimate the stupidity of rednecks. - FTFY
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Never underestimate the stupidity of rednecks. - FTFY
That's not a fix - not being a redneck does not necessarily preclude a person from being an idiot. NYC alone provides a few million examples of this.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
OMG. Slurm! Well, I learned something today.
[Excerpt from Wikipedia]:
Recently, several companies in Asia and Europe have begun to manufacture dietary supplements and energy drinks which contain synthetic versions of secretions of the larvae of Vespa mandarinia, which the adult hornets usually consume. The manufacturers of these products make claims that consuming the larval hornet secretions (marketed as "hornet juice") will enhance human endurance because of the effect it has on adult hornets' performance.
The pain of the Asian Giant Hornet is described as a hot nail piercing the skin and lasts about 4 hours with instant swelling.
Okay, I feel really, really sorry for whomever has experienced both and is able to make this comparison...not cool.
Wasps, and indeed flying stinging things in general, also not cool. Whole article is severely paranoia inducing, watch as I run for the hills every time something buzzes past my ear. On the bright side, the sound of one of these suckers flying by could definitely win the annoying ringtone competition...
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
When I lived in Japan, I had the misfortune of being stung by one of these damn things.
My upstairs neighbor, a vegan pacifist, noticed the nest but loudly forbid anyone from damaging it.
I was moving in a few weeks, and figured it would be the next person's problem.
The hornets got angry, and as I walked by the nest, one came out and landed on my arm. I remember how it seemed so big it had problems flying.
Sting to my upper right arm. Very painful, and my arm from the lower part of my neck down just past my elbow turned red, got really hot, and stayed that way for a week.
When I told my Japanese neighbor, he very calmly told me "Oh, you we should have taken you to the doctor. These hornets kill many people every year. If it had stung you on the neck, you would have died too. It's ok, too late now, though". Then he got a can of spray that shot 10 Meters, killed the nest, and I got to smash it to bits while my upstairs neighbor whined.
Humans are superior!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWkbtpBGqOc
Here is roughly how it is done
You can wipe out an ant nest by getting a scout to carry back poison ("Did you bring enough for everybody?") but that doesn't work with yellowjackets.
I didn't ask about biological controls. A scout bringing back the hornet equivalent of Ebola might work.
I did wonder about bait with a radioactive label so you could make the nest show up on instruments.
In practice, there is so much traffic near a nest that it's pretty obvious if you're near it.
Yes, I got attacked recently. When people asked what was new with me I said "Thousands of my enemies are dying in convulsions".
DDT
There evidently has been an increase in many hornet populations across numerous hornet species. Perhaps the elevated temperatures associated with global warming make them more active and perhaps more aggressive.
Wtf has this got anything to do with a tech site?
And you believe your *inset nation* will handle things any differently ...?
Australia. Poisonous insect, you say? That'll make a change from the poisonous spiders, reptiles and monotremes. Oh, and jellyfish. And octopus. And toads (although they are an import and more dangerous to pets than humans) ...
what the proportions are:
42 people dead & 1500 hurt out of 1.351 billion people...
just saying dont go eradicating these hornets quite yet...
Funny you should mention africanized bees - they aren't particularly dangerous, except to idiots or the extremely unlucky, but nonetheless they were the subject of a massive hysteria campaign by the US media that led to heights of panic and stupidity that, frankly, only the Americans could ever possibly achieve. A perfect example, in fact, of what OP posted above.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africanized_bee#Fear_factor
The fact that they were limited to Asia was the only reason I tolerated their existence in the first place.
I quit. I'm moving to Antarctica. Hornets have scared the ******* out of me for as long as I can remember. I'm out.
Is this a marketing ploy to promote Ender's Game?