CANNIBAL WASPS 87 



In other words, the wasp in excavating, has removed her weight 

 in sand eight hundred times. Now let us compare her work in pro- 

 portion with that which a man would have to do to accomplish a 

 similar feat. Taking a man weighing one hundred and fifty pounds 

 and multiplying by eight hundred, which are the same figures used 

 in the case of the wasp, we get one hundred and twenty thousand 

 pounds, or sixty tons. The insect then removes the equivalent of 

 sixty tons of earth to make her nest. This she does with no tools 

 except her forelegs, and the gigantic task is completed in four days. 

 Had we the same strength and endurance, the Panama Canal might 

 have been completed in a week or two! 



When the excavation is finished, the insect at once turns her atten- 

 tion to storing the subterranean cells with proper food for her off- 

 spring, and here we shall bring to light the cannibalistic instincts of 

 these mining wasps. 



The majority of the solitary wasps feed their young upon inch- 

 worms, spiders, flies, or insects of an entirely different order from 

 themselves. But not so the miners; who in some cases deliberately 

 hunt out members of their own family, paralyzing them with a drive 

 of the sting and dragging them into the tunnels for their young to 

 feast upon! 



As many as a half-dozen victims may be packed into a single cell. 

 Tiny humble bees, green and blue flower bees, 1 and sometimes unfor- 

 tunate miners that have been executed for daring to place a foot in 

 the wrong doorway. 



In a week the cells are packed from end to end with victims of the 

 cannibal's pitiless nature. The array is more gruesome than the 

 corpses lying in a morgue, yet the insect gloats over her industry of 

 murder, rushing eagerly in to inspect the contents of the cell, over 



1 Ceratinadae. 



