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How Paper Wasps Made Paper Before Humans Did
Updated: Sep 22
🛸 Mission Information (For Grown-Ups)
🎯 RECOMMENDED: Age 8+ years
⏱️ READING TIME: 5 minutes
🔬 STEM FOCUS: (Technology/ Engineering) Biomimicry, materials science, and natural adhesives
🧠 BRAIN SKILLS:Observation, cause-and-effect, and drawing connections across time
🎁 INCLUDES: Printable Worksheet
❓TODAY'S BIG QUESTION: What insect helped inspire the kind of paper humans use today?
Humans were cutting down entire trees. Grinding them into pulp. Pressing that pulp into thin, flat sheets.
And then—this is the part that concerned me—covering those sheets in tiny scribble-marks.
My working theory: some kind of tree-based printing ritual.
Spot’s working theory: “SNACKS.”
Neither of us was right.
But investigating this led us somewhere I did not expect.
Spot Finds the Real Inventor
While I was taking notes, Spot found a papery gray lump hanging from a branch and immediately declared it “an alien printing press.”
It was a paper wasp nest.
I examined it closely.
Layered.
Fibrous.
Shockingly similar to the paper in a human notebook.
Spot did not wait for my analysis.
Spot gathered wood chips, chewed them into a soggy pile, and attempted to “spit-print” what he called a 50-page comic book directly onto my control panel.
This did not work.
I do not recommend it.
My panel required cleaning for three days.
But Spot’s chaos accidentally proved something important.
How Paper Wasps Make Paper
Paper wasps have been making papery nests for millions of years—long before humans learned how to make paper from wood.
Here is how they do it:
A wasp scrapes tiny fibers from wood with her jaws. She chews those fibers into pulp and mixes the pulp with her saliva. The saliva helps hold the fibers together like a natural glue.
Then she spreads the mixture in thin layers.
When it dries, it becomes a material that is strong, light, and layered.
That is why a paper wasp nest feels so much like paper. Paper wasps use their jaws to scrape plant wood and combine it with saliva to create their gray, papery nests.[1]
Humans made paper too—but for most of history, they did not use trees. They made paper from rags, cotton, linen, ropes, and plant materials such as papyrus.
Making paper this way was slow. It could be expensive. And there were only so many old rags to collect.
Then, in 1719, way after wasps, a French scientist named René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur watched wasps build their nests and had an important idea.
He wrote:
“American wasps form very fine paper… they teach us that paper can be made from the fibers of plants, without the use of rags and linen.”
A wasp inspired the idea that trees can become paper!
Why Humans Took So Long to Catch Up
Réaumur had his wasp-inspired idea in 1719.
But wood-pulp paper did not become common until more than a century later.
The problem was that wood fibers are tough. Humans had to invent machines and chemical processes that could break down wood into usable pulp without making the final paper weak or crumbly.
It took decades of experiments and failed batches before wood-pulp paper could be made efficiently on a large scale.
Spot’s takeaway: “The wasp did homework nobody assigned her and still finished first.”
Accurate.
Paper mills eventually began using wood pulp during the 1800s, after papermakers had long relied on materials such as linen and cotton rags.
The Part That Still Amazes Me
Every notebook.
Every paper towel.
Every book on a human shelf.
They all begin with the same big idea: Fibers can be broken apart, mixed together, flattened into a sheet, and dried into something useful.
Paper wasps do their own natural version of that process with chewed wood and saliva.
Humans did not copy a wasp step for step.
But a wasp helped humans see a possibility:
Trees can become paper.
That is biomimicry—when humans learn from an idea nature has already tested.
And the wasp had been testing this one for millions of years.
Quietly.
Expertly.
Without ever asking for a science award.
Nib’s Challenge for You
The next time you see a paper wasp nest, look from a very safe distance. Wasps can become easily offended.
Do NOT approach it like Spot did!
Notice the texture: gray, layered, and papery.
Then look at a sheet of paper.
They are not exactly the same.
But they are built from a similar big idea: Tiny plant fibers can become something surprisingly strong.
Earth has been running materials-science experiments long before humans gave them names.
🛸 Stay curious, Earthlings!
References & Learn More:
[1] Paper Wasps: Friend or Foe? – Think IPM Blog https://blogs.cornell.edu/nysipm/2015/07/10/paper-wasps-friend-or-foe/
[2] Woodpulp and Paper Industry in the Mid-South https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/frbslreview/pages/1955-1959/62763_1955-1959.pdf
[3] THE HISTORY OF PAPER by Susan Kinsella Conservatree http://www.conservatree.org/learn/Papermaking/History.shtml
[4] Wood Pulp Paper Comes to the Northeast, 1865–1900 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.2307/3983078
[5] IPM Action Plan for Paper Wasps
[6] Pulp and Paper Industry History: From Papyrus to Recycled ... https://www.tstar.com/blog/pulp-and-paper-industry-history-from-papyrus-to-recycled-materials
[7] Do wasps chew on wood to build nests?
[8] Paper Wasps | Cornell IPM
[9] Pulp (paper)
[10] Of Wasps Making Paper | The Engines of Our Ingenuity https://engines.egr.uh.edu/episode/1052
[11] Paper wasp
[12] From the Woods: Paper!
[13] The Sting
[14] Wasp Nest and Worldwide Paper Shortage in the 18th ... https://whosmarted.com/wasp-nest-and-worldwide-paper-shortage-in-the-18th-century/
[15] How Wasps Taught People to Make Paper https://www.rovepestcontrol.com/blog/paper-wasps-to-make-modern-paper/
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