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 discovered that the wasps don’t dole out pain the same way to all species. Different ingredients in their venom cocktail do the dirty work depending on who’s at the business end of a wasp’s stinger, researchers report online January 6 in Current Biology.
Velvet ants are among the most well-defended insects, wielding not just venom, but warning coloration and odor, an extremely tough exoskeleton and long stinger, and the ability to “scream” when provoked. In 2016, the entomologist Justin Schmidt wrote that getting stung by a velvet ant felt akin to “hot oil from the deep fryer spilling over your entire hand.” Scientists have found that other vertebrates react to the wasp’s sting too, including mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds.
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