On the Schmidt Sting Pain index, the red velvet ant’s sting ranks a 3 on a scale of 1 to 4 with 4 being most painful. For perspective, wasp and bee stings rank at a level of 2 on the Schmidt ...

Velvet ant (Family Mutillidae; Dasymutilla sp.) ... Females are the only ones with the cool panda coloring, while male panda ants have fur that is red, orange, or white with black legs.

This makes the velvet ant’s color what scientists call “ultrablack” or “superblack”. Traditional black colorations reflect around five to ten percent of the light that hits it, says ...

In fact, the red velvet ant (Dasymutilla occidentalis) isn’t an ant at all, but a wasp. At around 3/4 of an inch long, it’s the largest of about 400 velvet ant species in the United States.

Few creatures can tangle with a velvet ant and walk away unscathed. These ground-dwelling insects are not ants, but parasitic wasps known for their excruciating stings. Now researchers have ...

A velvet ant sting is like “hot oil spilling over your hand” – now, scientists have identified molecules in its venom that let it deliver excruciating pain to a variety of other animals.

Traumatomutilla bifurca, a velvet ant — which is actually a wasp — known for its distinct black and white markings, found in a dry shrub desert in Brazil called the Caatinga.

A picture of the massive sting left by the "cow killer" velvet ant on Eric Breuer's leg in July 2020. "It felt like someone burning me with a cigarette on my inner right thigh," he ...