The executioner wasp is more painful than a bullet ant and can even burn a hole in your skin, but even worse, it can keep stinging.
A wasp can cause a tremendous amount of pain, even if you’re not allergic to them, but do they understand what they’re doing? It doesn’t seem fair if they can’t get hurt. Do wasps feel pain?
Wasps don’t feel pain because they lack the pain receptors and the emotional response that are markers of feeling actual pain as humans recognize it. However, they can feel irritation and appear to have a memory to react to similar circumstances that caused injury to them.
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Can Wasps Feel Pain
When a human is hurt, we simply call it pain. In other creatures, like pets and insects, we call this ‘nociception.’ This nociception is the sense that something is a danger to the body, like damage, extreme cold, or burning.
Some bugs seem to have a sense of nociception, and we can simplify that by saying they do feel pain because they act like they have felt it and avoid it in the future.
For insects like fruit flies, which have incredibly complex brains, sensory neurons to the ventral nerve cord translate nociception and cause a reaction long after the damage.
We can recognize this as similar to a chronic pain response, but fruit flies are not wasps. Let’s take a deep dive into wasp actions and reactions to see if they perceive anything we can identify as pain.
Do Wasps Have Pain Receptors
Insects like wasps have a small nervous system. However, that doesn’t necessarily equate to pain receptors. More likely, they can sense pressure and heat, but not in terms of pain.
Instead, it’s similar to irritation or linked to a survival instinct that tells the wasp to move away from these things.
As the Apiarist defines it, “Tissue damage, through chemical, mechanical or thermal stimuli, triggers a signal in the sensory nervous system that travels along nerve fibers to the brain. Or to whatever the animal has that serves as the equivalent of the brain…But nociception is not pain…Pain is a subjective experience that may result from the nociceptive response and can be defined as ‘an aversive sensation or feeling associated with actual or potential tissue damage.”
Do Wasps Feel Pain When Sprayed
Wasps can go through a rather dramatic series of spasms and twitching when sprayed.
However, the fact that we see it as dramatic or painful probably has more to do with human perception and our unconscious habit of anthropomorphizing than actual pain on the wasp’s part.
Flailing and struggling is also an indication of the attempt to move normally as the body shuts down.
Could Wasps Evolve Pain Receptors
Although it is possible to evolve virtually any trait, it seems highly unlikely that wasps would need to develop pain receptors.
Suppose sensitivity better-served wasp colonies by having emotions like fear and empathy at some point in the future. In that case, they might evolve a sense of pain and more emotional reactions.
For now, there’s no good reason a wasp should feel pain.
Do Wasps Remember Getting Hurt
Wasps do appear to have a memory. They can react to similar circumstances once they’ve encountered them and make an effort to avoid problems.
This indicates that the wasps remember events like getting hurt because it inconvenienced them. Rather than feeling pain and reacting emotionally, they recall that damage makes it hard to do things.
Do Wasps Feel Emotion
Feeling distressed or sad is a critical component of pain beyond the physical sensation because if you don’t react, what purpose does it serve?
In theory, animals evolve the ability to feel pain to avoid danger, so pain should be upsetting. If hurting doesn’t bother you, then it also doesn’t help you avoid the problem that caused it in the future.
An emotional reaction to pain is how you remember it happened.
The unfortunate truth about wasp’s emotions is that no studies have been done. Fruit flies are only distantly related to wasps, though they show signs of emotion, as do some other insects like bees.
Plus, insects have been evolving for over four hundred million years, so they were around before the dinosaurs. Bugs have had plenty of time to develop pain receptors and the emotional responses that make these useful.
According to BBC Future, “Geraldine Wright, a professor of entomology at the University of Oxford, gives the example of hunger, which is a state of mind that helps you to alter your decision-making in a way that’s appropriate, such as prioritizing food-seeking behaviors. Other emotions can be equally motivating – rumblings of anger can focus our efforts on rectifying injustices, and constantly chasing happiness and contentment nudges us towards achievements that keep us alive. All these things could also apply to insects.”
Unfortunately, this is just a theory and not solid proof.
Helpful Tips To Know If Wasps Feel Pain
Wasps don’t show enough recognizable signs of a pain response to say they feel pain. However, they do learn from being damaged.
Here are more helpful tips to know if wasps feel pain.
- The first wasps appeared around two hundred and forty million years ago in the mid-Triassic. Although this doesn’t mean they have reached some imaginary ‘final form’ in their evolution, it does indicate that they’ve had plenty of time to evolve a sense of pain but have not needed to do so.
- There are over 20,000 species of bees, but wasps are their closes relatives. Both are members of the order Hymenoptera and the suborder Apocrita. They share grub-like larva that is raised in galls or nests. One of the significant differences is that bees probably do feel pain and emotions.
- While they don’t feel pain or remorse for causing it, three species, the paper wasp, warrior wasp, and tarantula hawk wasp are among the top five most painful insects on earth to get stung or bitten by. The other two bugs in this pain-causing group are ants, specifically the bullet ant and red harvester ant.
Final Thoughts
Wasps probably can’t feel pain as we know it. However, they do react in some ways to past injuries and danger, which is a sign of learning and memory.
While these are different from feeling the pain, they could indicate the ability to evolve pain as a survival strategy in the future, which is fantastic.
For now, some insects, like fruit flies that have more complex brains, may be feeling the pain, but wasps don’t currently appear to share the sensation.
As far as science can tell, wasps don’t have any self-awareness or emotions, so you can rest a little easier if you need to destroy a nest that’s a risk to you or your family.
Remember to stay safe or call a professional to handle your wasp invasion.
