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 ...

An international team of scientists recently published detailed studies of a Brazilian species of velvet ant that they discovered to have superblack, or ultrablack, patches. An ultrablack ...

Ants range in size from the miniscule up to one ... There are several wasp species that closely resemble ants, including the velvet ant, which is actually a hairy, wingless wasp.

A velvet ant bite like “hot oil from the deep fryer” delivers an array of peptides that inflicts pain on insects and mammals alike.

The sting of a female velvet ant is one of the most painful in the ... venom that make it exquisitely effective against a wide range of victims, including invertebrates, mammals, birds, reptiles ...

The first thing to understand about velvet ants is that they are not, in fact, ants. They're wasps, some of which are wingless, and are named in part for their fluffy exteriors. About the size of ...

Researchers analyzed the velvet ant’s exoskeleton and uncovered a highly ... The varying climates of this South American country support a wide range of ecosystems across its more than 3.2 ...