velvet ants | 2016-09-21

There is this list that once received an Ig Nobel prize for improbable research and then became adopted by lunatics as the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. The story of how that research occurred and its subsequent transition into broader adoption could be worth a triviawednesday all on its own but today we will use it to get towards our real topic: the velvet ant.

On Schmidt’s Index, we have:

1. The Bullet Ant | native to Honduras, Nicaragua, and Paraguay, considered to deliver a venom inducing the most pain capable of being perceived by human; pain described by Schmidt as: “Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail embedded in your heel.” | Watch a dumb thrill-seeker participate in an Amazonian coming-of-age ritual in which gloves filled with bullet ants are placed on his hands here. moron…

bullet ant

2. The Tarantula Hawk | native to all parts of the world that aren’t too cold; pain described by Schmidt as: “Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair dryer has been dropped into your bubble bath. A bolt out of the heavens. Lie down and scream.” | Watch the BBC video detailing these guys paralyzing tarantulas and embedding their larvae in them here.

tarantula hawk

3. The Warrior Wasp | hyper-aggressive, Indonesian wasps who team up and drum their abdomens on their hives before mounting an attack; pain described by Schmidt as: “Torture. You are chained in the flow of an active volcano. Why did I start this list?”

warrior wasp

4. The Japanese Giant Hornet | the largest hornet in the world, native to Japan; pain described by Masato Ono (a different entymologist) as: “…like a hot nail being driven into my leg.”

japanese giant hornet

5. The Velvet Ant | our topic today; pain described by Schmidt as: “Explosive and long lasting, you sound insane as you scream. Hot oil from the deep fryer spilling all over your entire hand.” Watch a madman adventurer deliberately get himself stung by one of these here. He’s working his way up to the bullet ant and will try the tarantula hawk next.

Check out more of Schmidt’s descriptions of other stings here. They are worth a read…

So, the velvet ant is one of the very few creatures to reach a ‘3’ rating on Schmidt’s scale and it is only topped by four other creatures (each of which rate ‘4’ on the scale, the highest rating). In short — effing OWW!!

velvet ant female stinger

Despite its name, the velvet any is not an ant at all but is, in fact, a wasp. It is called an ant because the females have no wings and skitter around the ground much like an over-sized ant. Further, the males and females both have a lot of fuzzy, short, orange, hair on their bodies, which begets the ‘velvet’ part. The males do have wings but the females traded that gift of flight for the gift of a stinger — unlike humans, you’d rather meet the males of this species…

Actually, the hair is only usually orange and can range from yellowish-ocher to black and white striped — but then they are called panda ants.

panda ant

Also actually, they are not only called velvet ants but are also called ‘cow killer’ ants — legend has it that their sting is painful enough to kill a cow (zero actual reports of cow deaths or human deaths related to cow killer ants).

They tend to live in the drier parts of the world but are found in many countries, including the US. Further, these little ladies make a surprisingly loud screeching sound when they are distress (hear it here) — an eerie precursor to the inevitable out-freaking of their unwitting stingee…

I considered doing a series on this variety of nasty stinging creatures but I think this might be better as a one-off foray into their twisted world… I’ll admit my skin crawled through most of this writing…

So far on velvet ants.