1,001 Facts That Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader (100 page)

755

FACT :
There are about
10 quintillion insects on Earth
at any given moment; that’s 1.5 billion bugs for every human on the planet.
One and a half billion bugs? Sounds like Windows Vista.

Jerry Baker, Jerry Baker’s Bug Off!: 2,193 Super Secrets for Battling Bad Bugs, Outfoxing Crafty Critters, Evicting Voracious Varmints and Much More! (American Master Products, 2005).

756

FACT :
The
Vespa mandarinia
japonica, or Japanese giant hornet, is the size of your thumb, has a painful sting, and can
spray flesh-melting poison into your eyes
. Its poison also contains a pheromone that can summon every hornet in the hive to attack.
At least they don’t overdo it.

Ross Piper, Extraordinary Animals: An Encyclopedia of Curious and Unusual Animals (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007).

757

FACT :
As the world’s most venomous insect per sting,
the Japanese giant hornet kills forty people every year
, all of them excruciatingly painful deaths.
What, all that stinging and flesh-melting and hive-summoning, and they only manage forty kills a year?

Ross Piper, Extraordinary Animals: An Encyclopedia of Curious and Unusual Animals (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007).

758

FACT :
The bullet ant earned its name because of
a sting that feels like getting shot with a gun
. Some consider the bullet ant’s sting the most painful of all insects, and pain can persist for up to twenty-four hours after contact.
How would they know? Do they shoot a guy and let a bullet ant sting him at the same time and then ask him if the two feel the same?

John L. Capinera, Encyclopedia of Entomology, 2nd ed. (Springer, 2008).

759

FACT :
Africanized honey bees, better known as “killer bees,” hail from South and Central America, and as of 2006, were established in the American South and Southwest.
Killer bees are extremely aggressive
and prone to potentially deadly attacks when disturbed.
I’m the same way when I’m on the can and my kid tries to come into the bathroom.

John L. Capinera, Encyclopedia of Entomology, 2nd ed. (Springer, 2008).

760

FACT :
Killer bees are extremely territorial and have
a propensity for mass stinging attacks
on both humans and animals. Swarms can kill any number of humans from a few dozen people in Mexico to several hundred in Venezuela.
I’d like to see killer bees and Japanese hornets fight it out. That would make a great payper-view event. I’d pay to see it.

John L. Capinera, Encyclopedia of Entomology, 2nd ed.
(Springer, 2008).

761

FACT :
Africanized bees have only been around since the 1950s, when Brazilian scientist
Warwick E. Kerr bred a European bee with an African bee
in hopes of propagating the positive qualities of the former with a tolerance for tropical climates. The bees swarmed accidentally during quarantine and have been successfully invading the Americas ever since.
Thanks for that, Kerr. Ass.

John L. Capinera, Encyclopedia of Entomology, 2nd ed. (Springer, 2008).

762

FACT :
There is no physical way to determine the difference between an Africanized honey bee and the less harmful European bee—
even a specialist must examine several bees together
to differentiate them.
Can’t you just ask them?