Asian giant hornet. Photo by t-mizo, via Flickr.

Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse or weirder, we now have to worry about “murder hornets,” a variety of giant hornets native to Asia that have recently been spotted in Washington State, according to a report by the New York Times.

Vespa mandarinia, better known as the Asian giant hornet, can grow up to two inches long with a stinger of nearly one-quarter inch. That stinger delivers a venom that is described by those who have been stung as “excruciating” and “like having red-hot thumbtacks being driven into my flesh.” Multiple stings can be fatal to humans, and the hornets are known to aggressively attack in groups when defending their hives. In Japan alone, the hornets kill about 50 people a year.

The Times article paints a colorful-yet-terrifying profile of the insects, describing them as having “mandibles shaped like spiked shark fins” and “a cartoonishly fierce face featuring teardrop eyes like Spider-Man, orange and black stripes that extend down its body like a tiger, and broad, wispy wings like a small dragonfly.”

The hornets also pose a significant risk to honeybees, which the hornets target as a food source, “decapitating the bees and flying away with the thoraxes to feed their young.” The Times interviewed one beekeeper who described how the hornets had decimated his bees: