Why We Need Wasps

There is a stock conversation, which most of us participate at some point, the purpose of which is to ascertain the existence of a completely superfluous entity of flora or fauna in the hope of denying its very right to exist.

Recently I got into this very debate about wasps. They're pointless, right? Someone asked me recently.

An innocent enquiry that betrays a human inability to see the worth of an animal unless it has some form of obvious employment (cow) or a high aesthetic value (peacock). And without obvious form of employment the event of its non-existence doesn't upset the equilibrium of the world.

Wasps don't make honey after all.

And herein is the egoism that a species must have an employment which benefits human-kind.

The absenting of wasps from the eco-system would of course, if not apparently, upset the balance of the natural order. But if it's human application we're looking for:

Wasps are a natural pesticidal. They eat many parasites which feed on our crops. Without wasps we would require more pesticides on our crops; that would mean more toxic chemicals on the skins of our apples and carrots, ergo our bodies.

Without wasps we would be devoid of another of life's poetic sequences too: That the fig must be pollinated by a female wasp. In order to pollinate the fig, the female wasp enters the fig flower and loses its wings in this floral labyrinth; it has no means of turning back. It dies, there, of loneliness. A fig fruit is created.

Without wasps there would be no figs; no fig trees left in spite of their Biblical precedence. No leaves to disguise man's original sin.