Crawling along the underbrush of the tropical savannas of Brazil, there’s a powerful and mysterious insect known as the velvet ant. Actually a kind of wasp, wingless females of this species ...

The species in question is Traumatomutilla bifurca, a type of velvet ant – which is, somewhat confusingly, actually a species of wasp. Some of these wasps don't have any wings, but they do have ...

In a trial with a shrew, the small mammal repeatedly attacked the velvet ant, but every time the insect stridulated, the shrew backed off. In North America, a huge number of velvet ant species can be ...

Army ants, with their large mandibles and painful stings, may prey on reptiles, birds, or even small mammals ... including the velvet ant, which is actually a hairy, wingless wasp.

The sting of a female velvet ant is one of the most painful in the animal kingdom. Now, researchers have discovered that these insects have multiple proteins in their venom that make it ...