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Architecture & Engineering


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April 17, 2009

Strange But True!

Q. Which have been perhaps the fiercest six-legged soldiers in the history of warfare?

A. In Rudyard Kipling's “Second Jungle Book,” the hero enlists the aid of a colony of bellicose bees to beat back a pack of wild dogs, says Jeffrey Lockwood in “Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War.” The creature Kipling may have had in mind is the giant honeybee of Asia, or “Apis dorsata,” described as “the most ferocious and deadly stinging insect on Earth.” These bees are not only larger but attack in huge numbers (a colony comb can be 10 feet across) and will pursue an intruder 100 yards or more.


 
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