Bullet ant

The ant with the most painful sting

The bullet ant is one of the largest ants in the world: workers can exceed two and a half centimetres in length, with a brownish-black colour and sturdy mandibles. Its name comes from its sting, considered the most painful in the entire insect world: those who have felt it compare it to being hit by a bullet. On the Schmidt sting pain index, which measures the intensity of hymenopteran stings, it occupies the very top.

Habitat and distribution

It lives in the humid lowland rainforests of Central and South America, from Nicaragua to Brazil and Paraguay. Colonies of a few hundred individuals nest at the base of large trees; the workers forage mainly in the canopy and along the trunks, hunting small arthropods and gathering nectar.

The venom and the pain

The venom contains a neurotoxin called poneratoxin, which acts on the nerves to cause waves of searing pain that can last many hours — hence the German name of "24-hour ant". Fortunately the sting, however excruciating, is not life-threatening in the vast majority of cases.

Curiosities

Among the Amazonian Sateré-Mawé people, the bullet ant is central to a brutal rite of passage: young men slip their hands into woven gloves full of live ants and must endure the stings to prove their courage, repeating the ordeal many times over the years.

Conservation

The species is widespread and not considered threatened. Like all rainforest dwellers, however, it depends on the conservation of these habitats, increasingly reduced by deforestation.