From the September 5, 1931, issue
By Science News
SEEING EYE TO EYE WITH A WHITE WASP
The medieval Japanese, who sometimes closed up the fronts of their helmets with ferocious metal masks painted with vivid war paint, knew the right psychology for hand-to-hand encounters. It is much more disconcerting to be confronted with an immobile, wholly artificial hobgoblin face than to see that your enemys countenance is like your own, no matter how much distorted by rage or bloodthirstiness.
The faces of insects are masks. Because the whole arthropod phylum has evolved its skeleton outside its body, to be at once support and armor, insects are able to move parts of their faces only in rigid, hinged sections; and that, from an anthropopsychic point of view, is not much of an advantage. Some insects make themselves harder to look at by wearing vividly contrasting war-paint–for example, this white-faced wasp photographed by Cornelia Clarke.