“30 Times Worse Than A Bee Sting”

It's Bug Week at Wired.co.uk. Liat Clark rounds up the most dangerous insects. Among them, the bullet ant:

If the fact that this ant grows up to 30mm-long and shrieks when it falls out of trees to attack you isn't enough to terrify you, how about this: its sting registers as an epic 4+ (the highest rating) on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, created by entomologist Justin Schmidt. That's more painful than any other insect bite and 30 times worse than a bee sting. It reportedly creates a burning sensation that can last for up to 24 hours and the toxic venom paralyses the central nervous system of smaller prey. In humans the hit is, as the name suggests, something akin to being shot, according to those who have experienced it.

And, odd as it might seem, there are plenty of candidates to attest to this, seen as the bite has been turned into a rite of passage by some Amazonian tribes. Boys in the tribes as young as 12 prove they are ready to embrace manhood and become warriors by sticking their hands in giant tropical bullet ant-lined gloves for ten minutes (the tribe captures them by putting them into a temporary drug-addled coma). But that is merely a mild teaser to real pain: the volunteers have to wear the gloves 20 times, over the course of 11 hours, causing their hands to become repeatedly inflammed and temporarily paralysed.

The ritual is documented in the above video.