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YouTuber Left In Agony After Letting 'Murder Hornet' Sting Him

YouTuber Left In Agony After Letting 'Murder Hornet' Sting Him

Don't do this, obviously

Jake Massey

Jake Massey

You do not wanna take a sting from a 'murder hornet' - as the macabre moniker suggests.

If you see one of the two-inch (5cm) Asian giant hornets heading in your direction, you should immediately head in the opposite direction. But just in case you had any doubts about the ferociousness of the creature's sting, let this YouTuber's foolish exploits serve as a warning.

Coyote Peterson allowed one of the fearsome insects to sink its stinger into his arm back in 2018, causing him to writhe about in agony as he yelled: "Searing pain! Absolute searing pain!"

The 38-year-old also complained of dizziness and said his hand seized up, while the arm could be seen to swell up significantly and was painful to touch.

The effects of being stung by a murder hornet/Asian giant hornet/Japanese giant hornet/Vespa mandarinia (or whatever you want to call it) is now more pertinent than ever for people in the US, with the creatures having just made land in the country for the first time.

Multiple stings from the hornet can be deadly to humans, with the insects killing up to 50 people a year in Japan, according to The New York Times.

What's more, the hornets kill honeybees during their 'slaughter phase' by biting their heads off with their large mandibles, before feeding them to their young - and by now surely all of us know the importance of bees.

It really hurt.
YouTube/Brave Wilderness

Honeybees are crucial to all of us due to the role they play in pollination, which we rely upon to grow fruit and vegetables. In fact, an estimated third of all the food we eat is pollination-dependent.

As such, scientists are now on a desperate mission to eradicate the hornets before they spread beyond control.

Washington State Department of Agriculture entomologist Chris Looney told the NYT: "This is our window to keep it from establishing.

"If we can't do it in the next couple of years, it probably can't be done."

It is unclear how the hornets ended up in the US, though it is thought they most likely got trapped in a shipping container. However they got there, it's a worrying development for the nation, with the number of honeybee colonies in the country already in decline, plummeting from 6 million to 2.5 million between 1947 and 2017, according to the BBC.

Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Brave Wilderness

Topics: Animals, youtuber, YouTube