Murder hornet? No, but lookalike insect gives quite a scare in Washington, photos show

There’s a different massive, frightening insect in Washington, and some are mistaking it for a murder hornet.

A concerned landowner sent the Washington State Department of Natural Resources photos of a bug that could look a lot like an Asian giant hornet to an untrained eye. Officials said it’s something different.

“File this under insects that are not actually murder hornets,” officials said in a Wednesday Facebook post. “This is a wood wasp, also known as a horntail.”

Adult wood wasps can be about 1 1/2 inches long and have thick waists, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They have a “hornlike process at the end of their bodies,” but they don’t have a stinger.

“The part that looks like a stinger is really for drilling holes and laying eggs in dead or dying trees,” the Department of Natural Resources said.

The horntails will attack dying or recently cut trees. They are native insects in Washington and help recycle dead wood, DNR said.

Some people on Facebook said the bug looks scarier than a murder hornet.

“No that’s even creepier,” one commenter said.

University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources’ pest management program, however, says the insect is pretty harmless.

“Even though wood wasps can be a noisy, and sometimes scary, nuisance, they aren’t a threat to anyone or anything,” the group said on its website. “Waiting out the life cycle and repairing cosmetic damage is about all that can be done in an infested building.”

This story was originally published July 22, 2020 at 12:49 PM with the headline "Murder hornet? No, but lookalike insect gives quite a scare in Washington, photos show."