Snakes, as we know too well, come in two varieties: the venomous kind, which stick you full of poison, and the constricting kind, which smother you to death. (Both kinds, naturally, are quite beautiful.) But now New Scientist has revealed that bees come in both varieties, too – they can sting in self-defense, but they also will suffocate attackers:
Cyprian honeybees will swarm together around a threatening hornet, forming a tightly-packed ball that kills the would-be-invader, but exactly how this happened was unknown. Now – by a process of elimination – a study suggests that the honeybees kill by depriving their enemy of oxygen.
Either that or they’re using the awesome power of their hive-mind.