Hornets

The most abundant phylum on earth and the most perspicacious and precocious of the animals in many areas of index, especially strength, lifespan, and idiosyncratic abilities. Allow me to explain. One out of every eight life forms alive today is said to fall into the beetle family alone. This does not include all the other types of insects, from fireflies to dung beetles, to fire ants, to moths, to mosquitoes, to dragonflies, to grasshoppers, to hornets, to wasps and bumblebees, insects are perhaps the most diverse group in the animal kingdom and perhaps the most spectacular. This is not meant to be a Mutual of Omaha’s ‘Wild Kingdom’ production or Discovery Channel’s ‘Planet Earth’ recapitulation and analysis, but rather a sweeping generalization, which has ample potential to be pretentious and fallacious with exquisite and subtle simultaneity. Some insects take a seemingly servile and presumptuous role as hunters and gatherers, like leaf-cutter ants, whose sole purpose is to use their expertly designed mastication system to scythe through the fibrous exterior of leaves and bring back their golden, or rather, green, prize to the colony for food storage of apocalyptic preparation proportions – they do store their food, and their young for that matter, in underground cellars, or chambers, after all! Or take the bombardier beetle, for example, who has the unique capacity to generate explosive – quite literally – toxic projectiles from a gland in its abdomen and ward off predators and stun prey. Studying this unique creature has led me to question if the supposed fairy tales of fire-breathing dragons (dinosaurs) is actually even a fairy tale at all, but rather a real dragon with a real tail and a real ability to breathe in a quite eruptive fashion, indeed. Or consider the ordinary ant, sluggard, who works tirelessly even without a commander (sorry, I couldn’t resist; after all this is how the book of Proverbs puts it!). Not to mention bees, without whose symbiotic pollination (for the flower and for us, heterogenic cross-pollinator and food production enhancement, respectively) we would not survive for very long…and let’s not forget their delicate, exquisite elixir that is a result of all of their hard work: honey, of which the book of Proverbs also has quite a bit to say, most of which is good, but it does have its own warning label as well (Prov. 25:16). Or take locusts, able to destroy an entire season’s worth of crops in a matter of hours, of which the nation to the west of the Red Sea could give ample, anecdotal evidence. Also, insects tend to be superlative in almost every index in the animal kingdom, save the intelligence quotient. Nonetheless, in brute strength, lifespan, speed, and a multiplicity of other parameters, insects take the cake, and the gold (again!). Some species of ants can lift up to 100 times their own body weight! Hornets can fly at Mach speed…well, almost. Queen bees, after bathing in a sedated larval stage in royal jelly, can leave more than a decade, and yet can be replaced at a moment’s notice, with her own ‘cupbearers’ stinging her to death when she is rendered unable to reproduce sufficiently. Insects are entirely curious and we could, perhaps, learn a thing or two from them. Just recall that while Solomon used them to teach lessons to his son regarding frugality - “observe the ant you sluggard” (Prov. 6:6) - the LORD most often uses insects directly for purposes of judgment, most particularly the locust and the hornet.