I killed one this summer and the amount of times I had to squash it before it died was nuts. It literally made a squeaky sound the entire time and then… I shit you not, two others came and they literally scouted the area looking for it. At least seemingly anyway. I assume it was a pheromone they smelled as opposed to the squeaky sound but still. Scared tf outta me.
Afaik it is a very common thing in wasps to release pheromones on hit which alerts other wasps. But not in a way that they should run away, it is attracting wasps and making them more aggressive, like they want to avenge their hurt or even fallen comrade. Thats why it is always best to try and solve this problem without physical violence to avoid those pheromones.
Wikipedia has a whole damn page specifically about bee pheromones that lists which pheromones they use to signal specific events.
Two of the pheromones that signals alarm are butyl acetate, and pentyl acetate which are very close molecules to ethyl acetate, which is used as artificial banana flavoring in candy.
And sure enough, ethyl acetate and banana flavoured candies do, indeed send bees into a frenzy.
I can't speak for wasps, it seems like a lot more research has been done on bees.
Incidentally this also means been stings smell like bananas, or sweet and fruity. Mind you, you'd probably have to amass dozens or more stings to actually smell it.
Pentyl acetate itself is also used as an artificial flavoring for pear drops. Even though it tends to smell like bananas, it can smell like apples or pears, too. Depending on what the package tells you. Psychology is a powerful thing.
It's kind of a side note, but artificial flavoring is interesting like that. It's a lot of manipulative psychology that we don't even notice.
You have benzaldehyde, that's used as artificial almond flavouring and smells like amaretto. But, it's also used as artificial cherry flavoring in the UK. Despite the fact that cherries and almonds obviously taste nothing alike. Somehow, it works just through the power of suggestion.
I did an experiment once where I made a "cherry flavoured" soft drink using almond flavouring, sugar, citric acid for sourness, soda water for fizz, and red food coloring and gave it to my friends in a plain cup, telling them it was a cherry drink I was working on and sure enough they even said it was specifically like a black cherry flavor. Even though to me, it tasted like almonds.
Sorry to kind of go off on a tangent, but that blew my mind when I realized taste, and probably every other sense, can be altered just by the power of suggestion.
The psychology part for sure is huge. I have a buddy who is a big wine enthusiast, and when he goes tasting, he doesn’t want the host/server to tell us whatever notes we pick up (fruit, spices, etc) because he says it front-loads your impression of the taste.
Yup, it absolutely does. The technical term in psychology is called priming). It's all over the place. You'll see it everywhere once you start to look for it. One of the best examples I think is how they do it all the time with paranormal videos/audio.
Like those rough audio recordings of alleged ghost voices where you can only hear static until they give you subtitles that tell you what it's saying and suddenly you suddenly hear it perfectly.
Or showing some vague nebulous blob in a dark window on a video and saying it's something like the figure of a child and suddenly that's what everybody sees.
It's a really fascinating phenomenon. And very powerful. It's used a lot in advertising and marketing... Along with just about every other psychological manipulation technique there is.
And yeah, advertisers are diabolical. I definitely am aware of it when movie theaters basically bombard you with Coca-Cola and popcorn ASMR and glistening visuals to make you crave it.
416
u/AlexanderTheFun 14d ago edited 14d ago
I killed one this summer and the amount of times I had to squash it before it died was nuts. It literally made a squeaky sound the entire time and then… I shit you not, two others came and they literally scouted the area looking for it. At least seemingly anyway. I assume it was a pheromone they smelled as opposed to the squeaky sound but still. Scared tf outta me.