Most painful insect sting
Who
Bullet ant, Paraponera clavata
What
first
Where
Nicaragua ()
When
1983

In 1983, American entomologist Justin O Schmidt from the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Arizona, USA, published a detailed pain index of insect stings, based on a four-point scale, having tested a very large number of different species of stinging insect upon himself. The most painful sting, registering 4.0+ on his index, was that of the bullet ant Paraponera clavata, native to Nicaragua and southwards through Central America to Paraguay in northern South America. Schmidt described its sting as: "like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel". Others have said that the pain is like being shot – hence its name, "bullet ant".