Two queen wasps fight for dominance on a Sunday morning

From scribol.com/environment/animals-environment/how-a-…

Not all domination behaviour is violent, however. Their facial patterns also indicate which wasp is stronger or tougher: if the colour pattern is more fragmented, then that wasp is physically tougher.

But what if the facial pattern is not accurate? Wasps will submit for a short time, but then “throw a few punches” just to ensure that the pattern is telling the truth. If the fragmented pattern belongs to a weaker wasp, she will be pummelled and even bitten. “Lying” is punished in a wasp colony.

Surprisingly, if the wasp is stronger than the facial pattern would indicate, she too has problems. One experiment doped some weaker wasps with hormones to increase their strength. Although physically able to win a fight, a wasp with a loser’s face found rival wasps would refuse to behave submissively. So fighting was longer and harder than it should have been.

Some researchers believe that wasp behaviour has parallels to the way people behave. Aggression and dominance have been studied in many animals. Now the wasp, a social insect, can be instructive in the fields of opportunism, deceit, and punishment.

A worker wasp needs both the physical prowess and the appearance of honesty to successfully become a leader by becoming queen of her own colony.