Few people have a good word to say about wasps, said Constance Craig Smith in the Daily Mail. Unlike “gentle, productive bees”, wasps appear to have little going for them. “They build sinister white nests in our attics and sheds, have a ferocious sting and ruin summer picnics.”
They are the ancestors of bees (which are really vegetarian wasps), and are much more numerous in terms of species (with around 100,000, against 22,000). Furthermore, they really are very useful: as pest controllers; as accidental pollinators of crops; and even in medical science (studying wasp venom helped researchers figure out why some patients are so badly affected by Covid-19).
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Sumner has spent 20 years studying wasps, and Endless Forms is her “exuberant guide”: read this book, and you’ll probably think twice before you “whack the next one you find in your kitchen”.
Sumner has a good eye for the truly horrific details of wasps’ predatory techniques, said John Lewis-Stempel in The Times. She gleefully describes how the emerald jewel wasp “injects a cocktail of literally mind-numbing drugs into a cockroach”, rendering it as “zombified” and pliant – before leading it back to its burrow and feeding it to its babies.
Or there’s the orussid sawfly, said Kate Simpson in the Times Literary Supplement: a type of wood wasp that lays its eggs directly on to beetle larvae so its offspring can “gnaw its way out as an adult”. Sumner’s book also probes “deeper questions” – about why we favour some creatures over others, deem some “good” and some “bad”.
Wasps, it’s true, aren’t as clever as bees, said Steven Poole in The Daily Telegraph. But they’re still surprisingly smart. “They can (scarily) recognise human faces”; so powerful is their sense of smell that they are used to sniff out drugs and explosives. Many live in “highly structured communities”, with nurses, foragers, guards, and even something like “Asbos for undesirable youths”.
They also inspired the invention of paper, at least according to Chinese legend, which holds that the eunuch Cai Lun got the idea from the sight of wasps scraping bark off trees to build their nests.
After reading this “splendidly vivid” book, you may not exactly share Sumner’s love of wasps – “but it would be a tetchy soul who did not grudgingly admire them a bit more”.
-
Scorching hot sauces that pack a punchThe Week Recommends The best sauces to tingle your lips and add a fiery kick to your food
-
Syria’s strange post-Assad electionThe Explainer Sunday’s limited vote ‘suited the phase Syria is undergoing’, says interim president
-
Why did the China spying case collapse?Today’s Big Question Unwillingness to call China an ‘enemy’ apparently scuppered espionage trial
-
Mustardy beans and hazelnuts recipeThe Week Recommends Nod to French classic offers zingy, fresh taste
-
Susie Dent picks her favourite booksThe Week Recommends The lexicographer and etymologist shares works by Jane Goodall, Noel Streatfeild and Madeleine Pelling
-
6 incredible homes under $1 millionFeature Featuring a home in the National Historic Landmark District of Virginia and a renovated mid-century modern house in Washington
-
Primatologist Jane Goodall dies at 91Speed Read She rose to fame following her groundbreaking field research with chimpanzees
-
The Harder They Come: ‘triumphant’ adaptation of cinema classicThe Week Recommends ‘Uniformly excellent’ cast follow an aspiring musician facing the ‘corruption’ of Kingston, Jamaica
-
House of Guinness: ‘rip-roaring’ Dublin brewing dynasty period dramaThe Week Recommends The Irish series mixes the family tangles of ‘Downton’ and ‘Succession’ for a ‘dark’ and ‘quaffable’ watch
-
Dead of Winter: a ‘kick-ass’ hostage thrillerThe Week Recommends Emma Thompson plays against type in suspenseful Minnesota-set hair-raiser ‘ringing with gunshots’
-
A Booker shortlist for grown-ups?Talking Point Dominated by middle-aged authors, this year’s list is a return to ‘good old-fashioned literary fiction’
