Velvet ants in general are quite colorful, often with bright scarlet or orange patches, as well as silver, gold or white, usually with contrasting black patches. Their vibrant coloring serves as a ...

Despite their name and looks, velvet ants are actually wasps. Many of these delightfully fuzzy insects exhibit bright, contrasting shades of black with red, orange or white. Their bold bodies serve as ...

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 ...

The species in question is Traumatomutilla bifurca, a type of velvet ant – which is, somewhat confusingly, actually a species of wasp. Some of these wasps don't have any wings, but they do have ...

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 animal kingdom. Now, researchers have discovered that these insects have multiple proteins in their venom that make it ...