Why are wasps attracted to BBQs?

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I noticed every time I have a bbq, wasps always show up and buzz around all the meat dishes.

In: Biology

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Larval wasps typically eat only meat, because they have to rely on foods that are brought to them. Therefore, they normally eat insects such as beetles, spiders, flies, and many others. The adult wasps sting and paralyze the animals, then bring them back to the nests for the larvae to feed off of.

Edit: Let me try to save you some time in posting questions like this.
You’ve observed wasps around your meat dishes when you BBQ.
You could have Googled “do wasps eat / like meat?” Or something similar.
I noticed the same thing a few years (~15? Jeez I’m old) back. I Googled it and found the answer.

I’m truly trying to be helpful. The best part about looking these things up is you can learn a lot on your journey to discoveries, and may lead to more involved/complicated questions.

Anonymous 0 Comments

They smell the dead animal flesh and it’s a way for them to feed themselves and their larvae.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Wasps are omnivores, so the same reason that flies buzz around your dishes. The are attracted by scent and want to consume.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I have personally never heard of wasps being attracted to BBCs specifically. However, people with a darker skin complexion have more melanin in their skin. Melanin is very useful for protection from the sun but it does have a few drawbacks. One of them being that it makes it so you cannot produce as much vitamin D per unit of sunlight hitting your skin. Another is that it makes your skin more attractive to wasps and other critters such as raccoons and bears. Critters obviously includes mosquitos as well which is why so many people in Africa are dying of Malaria as opposed to people in Europe. Malaria is approximately equally present worldwide, but mosquitos generally go for melanated people more and thus they spread malaria to African people more.