A lesson from a wasp and a tarantula

Back when I was a college freshman, I recall reading a short essay about how a certain species of wasp could overcome a tarantula and use it to sustain its young until it finished growing.

What struck me about it was how the tarantula refused to response aggressively to the wasps aggressive probing.  The wasp needed to correctly identify the tarantula, as a certain species of tarantula was required for its purposes.  So, the tarantula allowed the wasp to "check it out" rather intimately as opposed to saving itself from the attack.  Mind you, the tarantula wasn't helpless.  It was plenty able to defend itself from the wasp, if only it would, it could live.  But it mindlessly allowed the wasp to probe every part of its body until the wasp was satisfied the tarantula was fit for consumption.  Only when the things got serious at the end, and the wasp set out to sting the tarantula did the tarantula begin to defend itself.  Ah, but too late.  The wasp stings the tarantula and immobilizes it, but doesn't kill it.  Then wasp lays its egg and the egg hatches and eats the tarantula alive while it grew to adulthood.

The essay asks the obvious question as to why the tarantula acted so stupidly.

There may not be an answer to that one, as both creatures were probably about equally as intelligent.

But as people, we are expected to learn from experience of our lives, and also from others.  For a person or a nation to allow itself to be probed aggressively by an enemy is hard to understand.  But such things happen all the time.  Even when a nation is alert, it can still yield its secrets to an aggressive adversary.  I remember reading about such stories in a book about the KGB.  Some of its exploits affect US relations with Europe to the this very day.  To be lax in such an environment that always exists in one form or another in international statecraft, is to invite aggression.  In my opinion, we have been increasingly stupid in this way since about the time of the Nixon administration.  It's not getting better.

The conclusion should not need discussion.