Secrets of velvet ant’s venom explain what makes its sting so painful

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

By James Woodford

6 January 2025

Velvet ants sting by injecting venom from their abdomen

Jojo Dexter/Getty Images

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 exquisitely effective against a wide range of victims, including invertebrates, mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians.

Velvet ants are in fact a family of wingless wasps with more than 7000 species. The researcher Justin Schmidt, who invented the Schmidt sting pain index, described their sting as “explosive and long-lasting, you sound insane as you scream. Hot oil from the deep fryer spilling over your entire hand.”

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To investigate what makes it so painful, Dan Tracey at Indiana University and his colleagues asked members of the public to carefully collect female scarlet velvet ants from sites in Indiana and Kentucky.

They tested the venom on fruit flies , mice and a Chinese mantis , a potential predator of velvet ants.

One of the peptides that the team isolated from the venom, called Do6a, clearly caused a response in insects but, surprisingly, not in mice.