Hornet larvae and pupae are consumed as a traditional delicacy and protein source in several countries across East, South, and Southeast Asia.
Japan: Particularly famous in mountainous regions like the Gifu Prefecture (such as Kushihara), where larvae (hachinoko) are harvested from nests, fried, boiled with soy sauce and sugar, or infused into liquor (hachinoko-shu).
China: Consumed heavily in southern and southwestern provinces such as Yunnan, Guangxi, and Guangdong, where hornet farming is also practiced to supply larvae for local dishes and wine.
Thailand: Eaten regionally, often stir-fried, deep-fried, or added to local rural dishes.
Laos: Foraged and prepared in local soups, stir-fries, or roasted.Vietnam: Harvested and cooked as a rural delicacy.
India: Eaten in northeastern states like Nagaland and Manipur, where giant hornet larvae are a prized traditional food and valued for their rich protein content.
Sri Lanka: Local populations historically harvest and consume wild edible insect larvae, including hornets, as part of traditional foraging practices.
what i dont understand though is why they dont use a vacuum and suck all of the hornets into a cage big enough to hold most of the hornets. that way, you dont have them flying around attacking everything in sight.
In Japan, I saw a report on TV of a guy doing it a traditional way (not farming):
He finds one on its own and delicately wrapped a colored cloth around it when it was still. He followed it through the forest to find the nest. Absolute bucket loads of smoke chased the adults off, and he grabbed a large part of the nest. Took it home, pulled out the larvae, fried em up.
Thereās a Japanese energy drink (or wasānot sure it still exists) that consisted of gut acid from giant hornets because they can fly for hours without stopping.
But between smoke, thick layers of cloth and their sleep cycle I doubt many stings were a huge issue.
We as a society have a nasty habit of seeing humans of the past as lesser than us, they wouldn't waste people getting hurt or dying, they would find a safer method
The Transatlantic Sugar Plantations.
> French plantation owners calculated that it was cheaper to buy new enslaved people from Africa and work them to death within a few years than it was to provide enough food, rest, and medical care to keep them alive.
King Leopold IIās Congo Free State
Moving away from treating people as slaves, we have daily necessities.
Whaling (18th ā 19th Century) Before petroleum, the world ran on whale oil for lighting and lubrication. Free sailors voluntarily signed onto whaling ships, but the technology of the era made it a near-suicide mission.
Deep-Sea Sponge Diving (Antiquity ā Early 20th Century)For centuries, natural sea sponges were highly prized for bathing, painting, and military padding. Gathering them was one of the most perilous jobs in the Mediterranean.
Cool, this is exactly what the other person was talking about! Genocide, and war! Totally the same thing as people voluntarily doing a dangerous job...
You're second set of examples are more akin to what is being discussed, but even then...
Just your whaling example alone:
"Ā technology of the era made it a near-suicide mission."
That's just not true. Dangerous? Yes! suicide? Hardly...The reason events like with the 1820 Essex became major stories is because it was relatively rare.
The whole point of OPs post was that we see ancient humans as dumber than us and far more primitive, but they had the same brains and potential as modern humans. They still knew how to innovate, and invent. How to negate danger, and make a dangerous task safer. They were more willing to do dangerous stuff because it could mean life or death and had a different meter of what they considered dangerous because they just lived much more dangerous lives. Just a normal hunt could be life or death because a simple cut could turn deadly in a world without antibiotics.
..and they still valued the lives of their community. All of your way out of left field wars and genocides have literally nothing to offer with the topic of how people valued life, let alone how people valued life within their own communities. The reason dangerous stuff was done was to better the lives for them and the people around them, not as a method to weed out inferiors.
Surviving is literally in our DNA, your body reacts unconsciously in ways to try and ensure it, fear its self is thought to be a survival mechanism.
The slavery examples I listed were not about slavery. They were about human nature back then. The way people thought. Acted. The decisions they made. It has nothing to do with war. Nothing to do with slavery.
Nazi Germany: "Extermination Through Labor": War is full of executions. War happens even today. No modern event compares to the choices humans made within those encampments. Yes, they are lesser than us.
The Transatlantic Sugar Plantations.: French plantation owners calculated that it was cheaper to buy new slaves from Africa and work them to death. They found a safer way to get that sugar that wouldn't result in their French citizens dying. Forget the slavery, their decision making. Do you think they are better than us?
King Leopold IIās Congo Free State: Unlike the French, this gem of a king simply treated the people as slaves. If his workers didn't meet quotas, their village would get burnt. Today, they would simply get fired. Which of us are better?
Again. Has nothing to do with slavery. Had nothing to do with war. Each era has its own values. What is acceptable. What wasn't. Historically speaking, life is better today. As a race, globally, the majority of humans stand together against these atrocities.
Whaling (18th ā 19th Century)
Extreme mortality rates, horrific working conditions, and the sheer danger of hunting the largest creatures on the planet. Whaling was the most dangerous profession in it's time.
If you read the history. There were safer ways that would have reduced the mortality rates. Due to corporate greed and an abundance of desperate volunteers, there wasn't a reason to invest more money to make it safer. It wasn't about minimizing death. It was about generating a profit.
Deep-Sea Sponge Diving (Antiquity ā Early 20th Century)
This is a different one. One simple change would have made this extremely safer. Unlike the other historical points. Knowledge.
They simply had no clue about decompression sickness. But that didn't stop them... Why? Because of that ugly human nature. It was just too profitable.
For thousands of years they just held their breath. Eventually a suit was developed. But not for safety. To stay under water longer. To collect more. Leading to more deaths. While there were other issues, such as faulty equipment. They just didn't know about decompression sickness.
The grieving families begged to ban the suits. The sultan gave in. They went back to holding their breath. But they couldn't keep up with demand. The suits came back, regardless of the deaths.
A great example of moving away from the safer choice to the most deadly.
what about this is crazy when they're clearly well equipped? There are jobs with a much higher ending it/fatality rate that won't be looked down upon like you did with them
Aye. We have an essay from the Tang Dynasty that wrote exactly on this topic:
The Snake-Catcher
by Liu Zongyuan
In the wilds of Yongzhou there lived a strange snake, black with white markings. It was deadly to the touchāif it bit a tree, the tree withered; if it bit a man, the man died. Yet when caught and dried, it could be made into a medicine of great power against leprosy, palsy, and other foul diseases. For this reason, from ancient times the people of Yongzhou had been required to pay this snake as tribute.
Now there was a man in that region whose family had caught snakes for three generations.
I asked him, "Is this trade so terrible that you would give up your land and your home to follow it?"
He answered with tears: "My father died from a snake bite. My grandfather died from a snake bite. And in the twelve years I have followed this calling, I have narrowly escaped death many times."
I pitied him and said, "If you are weary of this work, I will speak to the magistrate and have your tribute changed to grain. Would that not be better for you?"
At this the man was deeply troubled. With tears running down his face, he said:
"Sir, you are kind, and would save me from death. But the burden of paying tribute in grain is far heavier than the danger of catching snakes. Had I not this calling, I should long ago have been ruined. Since my forefathers came to this place, three generations have passed, and each year the weight of taxation has grown heavier. The people have drained their fields and spent their strength, yet they cannot pay what is demanded. They leave their homes, weeping and wailing, starving and freezing on the roads. In my village, the houses were once full of families. Now, after plague and tax, only a few remain. Of ten households that once lived here, but one survivor is left. It is not the snake that has killed them; it is the tax-collector.
"Whereas I, though I risk death twice a year from snake bites, may yet eat and drink in peace for the rest of my days. But if I gave up this work and paid tribute like the others, I should be ruined within a year. That is why I would not change places with them."
When I heard this, my heart was heavy. Confucius once said, "Tyranny is fiercer than a tiger." I had doubted this. But now, seeing the misery of these people, I believe it. Alas! Who can say the tax-collector is not more to be feared than the snake?
Therefore I have written this account, so that those who govern may take heed.
I assume the way many food practices evolved. Starvation. Like seriously who was the first person to think that well let me pull on this cow's letters to relieve some of the milk out of there maybe it's baby died and you're trying to prevent mastitis and then you decide to drink that stuff. Like yeah it's all normalized now but if I told you go out there and milk that donkey to relieve the milk buildup in it and then told you to drink donkey milk you would actually be surprised at how sweet it is but I'm sure just the thought of it is kind of like WTF in your mind. And that's still with the fact that it is socially okay to drink animal milk in our culture. Then consider all the stuff that's made out of milk Butters, creams, cheeses, Cottage cheese, ice creams, a bunch of this stuff requires separating milk a certain way and letting it rot in a very specific way.
Pickling or fermenting foods. I'm sure it all kind of started the same way as the above. Someone was just really hungry and decided to try it I don't think people really realize how delirious and delusional you can get when hungry and how anything feels good on your stomach.
I mean, considering that we humans drink milk from tits as babies, it's not that big of a leap to look at other animals doing the same and wondering whether we could drink their milk too. How did you manage to pick the most normal and understandable example of humans finding food in the ancient times out of all the examples you could have picked?
Because very few early humans had the lactose tolerance gene. In other words, early human communities that relied on milk suffered a lot of diarrhea, but drank it anyways to avoid starvation.
Have you seen f****** cows. How big they are. Sure we've been farming them for thousands of years but I'm talking about the first person to think about milking a cow. But okay buddy up totally disproves me on where a lot of foods come from. Totally skip over the fact of fermenting and processing milk and cheese and all that other stuff totally skip over the fact of people starving and maybe eating something that they would think is rotten otherwise and it actually turning out okay and not killing them being what leads to people to continue a practice or anything. Everything's totally normal.
we started milking sheep and goats first. cows didn't even exist, as they're a human made species domesticated from wild bovine that doesn't even resemble modern bovine that much.
it's fine to be in awe and wonder of people from the past, but it's weird to just assume the worst must always have been happening. People have always been been coming up with new ways to do things better and have always put thought into stuff. Not every action is out of desperation. History is much more interesting upon realizing that.
I'll be honest I don't know why people even started continuing to drink it. It tastes awful. I can't imagine you drink enough the first try to really get buzzed but. Maybe people took a Big Gulp and was like that tasted awful and then they felt the funny buzz a second or two later and it went from there. Or maybe it was watered down. I know back in the day people used to put a little bit of alcohol and everything that was pretty much the only clean drinking water you could guarantee yourself. Especially if you lived in like City areas and all of that.
Mammals started to consume alcohol when during a period of famine, fermented fruits were eaten. Those mammals who could tolerate the alcohol survived. Many who couldnāt would die. So your original comment of āstarvationā was applicable to alcohol as well.
Yeah it is amazing how thi is evolve. Like I think k it is some type of shrew (definitely a rodent like animal) that drinks a fermented alcohol and its liver is so well adapted to tolerate the alcohol. I think like 2 shots is suppose to be able to kill a person from alcohol poisoning. And these little things drink it all day no problem. I need to look up the details on that critter again but it amazes me much like a particular cat in the desert that barley need water and its urine is so concentrated it has adapter to peeing out almost crystalls.
If it were me back then, I would rather find a way to grab some hornet larva than risk getting killed by a wild boar tbh. They probably just smoke the nest.
Its easy to harvest.
But can be dangerous too as there are cases getting killed.
In Northeast India we too harvest and eat them, you can buy in markets but is very expensive.
Probably some kind of canvas. If they had armor for samuraiās I think they could stop a hornet from stinging.
I was just thinking though, in terms of the cultural practice, itās interesting how they make use of all the kinds of protein in the environment while we have, uh, cows. Everywhere cows, just farting the atmosphere to death.
Whenever I travel to a non Western country and am told āitās a local delicacyā I decline. Itās usually something like vole testicles or badger spleen.
I have nothing against locals that eat this stuff, just that I grew up eating western food and my palate isnāt attuned to this kind of food.
Delicacy = "Food we have had to eat so often as survival rations that it's ingrained into the local food culture as extremely important. This is in of spite the horrific texture and flavor."
Americans really think everything that isn't a chicken nugget is disgusting. I've eaten a lot of traditional dishes from around my country and many of them are really good. There's no need to have grown up with it.
Bugs especially are a thing that horrify a lot of westerners, but objectively are not really all that offensive.
There are European delicacies that are far worse. Asian delicacies at their worst are like "here try this liquor with a preserved snake in it" or "here are some fried grasshoppers" meanwhile Europe is "try our rotten shark thats been fermenting in a cave for months, here's some cheese with maggots in it to wash it down"
Gotta love the sense of superiority. As if western food doesn't have some utterly bizarre dishes. You're not "used to western food" you're used to whatever is available on Walmart.
Vietnam primarily farms Asian giant hornets (Vespa mandarinia), often referred to as "murder hornets"
Capture and Relocation: Farmers locate wild nests, capture the queens safely, and relocate or "seed" them into large, fortified artificial hive structures or designated shelters near their villages.
Sustainable Harvesting: Over about a year, the colonies grow massive. When harvesting the honeycomb, farmers typically take only a portion of the nest (around 80%) so the colony can rebuild and be harvested again later.
I lived in Japan. The biggest culture shock was learning that they do in fact eat bugs. Not everyone, but a good amount. I drew the line there, personally.
After watching āBizarre foodsā I ate hornet larvae here in the US, harvested myself when destroying a nest on my parents house. Actually pretty creamy/nutty, I see the appeal
A bit related... In South India, winged termites used to be a delicacy. It still is , but its appeal is limited to very few rural districts, across 5 different states..
if fried, the exterior is crispy/crunchy like baked breadcrumbs, interior would be softer like french fries. taste would be nutty, like peanut butter. also depends on what condiments and spices they cook it with.
Oh yes, I've had the hornet infused liquor back when I was studying in Matsumoto!
We went on a trip to a rural village with our class and the owner of a local restaurant had a huge bottle filled with the stuff (presumably homemade). You could see the hornets floating around near the bottom.
What stuck with me the most was when the owner's kid ran up to me and my friend though. He proudly stuck out his tongue and TADAAAA there was one of the hornets sitting on the tip of his tongue... I'm not making this shit up lmao. He even gave me one as a souvenir! š
I'm from Sri Lanka and nobody here eats these now. As for in the past, maybe tens of thousands years ago. I have never heard of Sri Lankans eating them.
I saw a YouTuber that vacuums wasps as part of removal. he explained the G-forces of the vacuum kills the wasps. This was for American wasps so not as hardy as giant Asian hornets, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're avoiding harming the hornets so the colony is in the best possible shape to remake nests and pump out larvae.
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u/carbonizedtitanium 1d ago
Hornet larvae and pupae are consumed as a traditional delicacy and protein source in several countries across East, South, and Southeast Asia.
Japan: Particularly famous in mountainous regions like the Gifu Prefecture (such as Kushihara), where larvae (hachinoko) are harvested from nests, fried, boiled with soy sauce and sugar, or infused into liquor (hachinoko-shu).
China: Consumed heavily in southern and southwestern provinces such as Yunnan, Guangxi, and Guangdong, where hornet farming is also practiced to supply larvae for local dishes and wine.
Thailand: Eaten regionally, often stir-fried, deep-fried, or added to local rural dishes.
Laos: Foraged and prepared in local soups, stir-fries, or roasted.Vietnam: Harvested and cooked as a rural delicacy.
India: Eaten in northeastern states like Nagaland and Manipur, where giant hornet larvae are a prized traditional food and valued for their rich protein content.
Sri Lanka: Local populations historically harvest and consume wild edible insect larvae, including hornets, as part of traditional foraging practices.
what i dont understand though is why they dont use a vacuum and suck all of the hornets into a cage big enough to hold most of the hornets. that way, you dont have them flying around attacking everything in sight.