Wrestling, Wasps and war paint...

When two Mexican Wrestlers square off at the start of a fight can they tell, just by looking at the mask of their opponent, who is the better fighter?


Well wrestling paper wasps can. These wasps often have patterns on their faces comprised of one or two spots:


And apparently the wasps with the most spots tend to be the better fighters! What is really surprising though is that there don’t seem to be ‘cheats’ evolving. I mean you don’t get weak deer with the biggest antlers because antlers are costly to grow and maintain, but face spots don’t look that costly right? So why don’t you get weakling wasps pretending to be stronger with spotty faces?

Well it turns out that if a wasp gets into a fight with a faker (either a weak opponent with more spots or a strong opponent with less) then they are likely to attack much more ferociously than they would against a normal opponent. So the cost isn’t in getting the spots, it’s in getting caught!

And how did scientists find this out? Well that’s where the war paint comes in. Wasps were painted to look stronger (spottier) than they really were or were given hormones to make them stronger than they looked, and then sent off to wrestle. The painted or homonally stronger bees if caught out were punished! Poor things!

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