In America, most people are scared of hornets and wasps the same way that we might be scared of needles.

It's not true fear. We know nothing bad is going to happen. We're just nervous about that

little bit of pain associated with the encounter, and we want to avoid it. But in Asia,

they're scared of hornets the same way we're scared of sharks.

Today we're going to talk about the great white shark of the hornet world,

the Asian giant hornet, Vespah Mandarinia.

I'm Mackin. This is Species.

Hey, welcome to the show. If you're scared of creatures who sting, you may or may not want to listen to this one.

But before you go, maybe skip to the end, because I've got a big announcement, and I want to make sure you all hear about it.

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I take a few minutes every evening to respond to your tweets. Thank you donors for making all this possible.

Thank you, Eric and the animals for playing me in. And now, without further ado, I present to you, the Asian Giant Hornet.

I've been reading a novel set in Japan, and in one of the early chapters,

there's a news story about someone who was walking in the woods, and they got killed by Hornets.

And where I live, the reaction to that news story would be,

oh my gosh, hornets killed someone. But the main character's reaction was weirdly, oh my gosh,

I walk in those woods. There was not a single ounce of surprise dedicated to the notion of a

hornet killing a human. And since I've had a request to cover

Asian hornets in the past, I looked into it, and immediately I found some absurd statistics.

Every year, on the island of Japan alone, 30 to 50 people are killed by hornets. It's hard to get stats that cover all of Asia, since this

hornet does live all over the continent, but during one particularly bad season, 42 people were

killed in a single Chinese province in a matter of months. Imagine if sharks killed this many

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