40 Fun Facts About Schmidt Sting Pain Index

The bullet ant tops Schmidt's index; what does the word bullet in its name refer to?

The pain of being shot is how some victims describe the sting, and it keeps coming in burning, throbbing waves for up to a full day.

The Sateré-Mawé people weave live bullet ants into which item for an initiation rite?

Gloves woven from leaves hold the ants with their stingers facing inward, and the initiate's arm can be left shaking for days afterwards.

The tarantula hawk, top-rated on Schmidt's pain index, is the official insect of which US state?

New Mexico adopted it in 1989 after elementary-school children researched state insects and ran a statewide ballot of schools.

Which satirical science award did Justin Schmidt share in 2015 for creating his sting pain index?

The Ig Nobel Prize honours research that first makes people laugh and then makes them think, and its citation praised him for painstakingly creating the index.

Michael Smith, honoured with Justin Schmidt in 2015, took stings on 25 body parts; which hurt most?

The nostril topped his ratings along with the upper lip, while the skull, the tip of the middle toe and the upper arm hurt least.

Justin Schmidt based his pain index on roughly how many stings he took from insects himself?

About 1,000 stings from more than 80 groups of ants, bees and wasps went into the ratings, with scores from colleagues used as a cross-check.

Which familiar insect's sting did Schmidt fix at a rating of 2 as the anchor for his pain index?

The honey bee was chosen because almost everyone knows how its sting feels, so every other insect could be scored as milder or worse than that.

The tarantula hawk has a top rating on Schmidt's index, yet its intense pain lasts only how long?

About five minutes is all it lasts, which makes this sting short-lived beside others on the list that throb for hours.

The stinger of ants, bees and wasps evolved from which body part?

An egg-laying tube, called the ovipositor, turned into a venom-injecting weapon in these insects, so males have nothing to sting with.

Which Brave Wilderness host filmed himself being stung by a bullet ant and an executioner wasp?

Coyote Peterson built a huge following by taking bites and stings on camera, though he studied film at Ohio State rather than biology.

Schmidt's sting pain index climbs from mild stings to which top level, shared by just three insects?

4 is the ceiling: the 1983 original gave it to a single ant, and later versions of the list added two wasps.

Female tarantula hawks paralyse tarantulas with their sting in order to do what with the spider?

Feed their larva: a single egg is laid on the helpless spider, and the grub that hatches eats it while steering clear of the vital organs.

Which insect, nicknamed the cow killer, has a sting rated as high as 3 on Schmidt's index?

The velvet ant is a wasp whose females lack wings, and its armour is so tough that collectors have struggled to push steel pins through it.

Which invasive pests of US backyards and golf courses rate only 1 on Schmidt's sting pain index?

Fire ants sit near the bottom of the scale, where Schmidt likened their sting to the small static shock from touching a light switch.

Justin Schmidt, who built his pain index at a bee research center, was a specialist in which field?

Entomology is the study of insects, and Schmidt spent his career on their chemical and behavioural defences, venom above all.

In which part of the world are bullet ants, the top-rated stingers on Schmidt's pain index, found?

Central and South America is their home, where they live in humid lowland rainforest in nests of several hundred ants.

The bald-faced hornet, rated 2 on Schmidt's pain index, is not a true hornet but which kind of wasp?

A yellowjacket in black and white: the species is classed as an aerial yellowjacket, and its pale face sets it apart from its yellow cousins.

Which insect, common in Arizona and rated 3 by Schmidt, is believed to have the most toxic venom of all?

The harvester ant in question is the Maricopa species, whose venom is potent enough that a dozen stings can kill a two-kilogram rat.

Which top-rated insects on Schmidt's index warn intruders by drumming on the inside of their nest?

Warrior wasps scrape their jaws across the nest wall to sound the alarm, and Schmidt pictured their sting as being chained in a lava flow.

Every insect on Schmidt's pain index belongs to which order, a group that also includes the sawflies?

Hymenoptera takes in the ants, bees and wasps, more than 150,000 described species, and its name is Greek for membrane wing.

Schmidt built his pain index to test whether painful, toxic venom let insects evolve which way of life?

Living in colonies turns a nest into a rich meal for predators, so Schmidt reasoned that only insects with punishing venom could afford to gather.

Which 2016 book by Justin Schmidt gathered his pain ratings for dozens of ants, bees and wasps?

The Sting of the Wild pairs each rating with a brief description of how the insect's attack felt, since very different pains can share one number.

Which Arizona city housed the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, where Schmidt developed his pain index?

Tucson was where he spent years studying bee nutrition, chemical communication and behaviour, and he died in the city in 2023.

Which History Channel series inspired by Schmidt's index has two hosts score bites and stings out of 30?

Kings of Pain sends biologist Adam Thorn and animal handler Rob Alleva out to be bitten and stung, scoring intensity, duration and damage.

The jack jumper ant, rated 2 on Schmidt's index, is feared less for its pain than for causing what?

Anaphylaxis from its sting has killed several people, because the venom is unusually good at provoking allergies in those who live near the ants.

Polistes species, several of which rate 3 on Schmidt's index, get which common name from their nests?

Paper wasps mix fibres from dead wood and plant stems with saliva, building open combs that look like grey handmade paper.

Schmidt rated one everyday bee sting a full point higher, at 3, when it lands on which part of the body?

The tongue is the special case: he imagined the bee hiding inside a soda can, and judged the aftermath thoroughly miserable.

Bullhorn acacia ants, rated under 2 by Schmidt, sting to repay their host tree with which service?

Driving off herbivores is the ants' side of the bargain, and in return the tree houses them in swollen thorns and feeds them.

Justin Schmidt argued that painful stings evolved chiefly as a defence against which kind of attacker?

Large vertebrates such as mammals and birds can be a million times an insect's size, and Schmidt called the stinger the weapon that cancels that gap.

What do biologists call the bright warning colours that advertise a tarantula hawk's sting to predators?

Aposematism works because a predator learns to link the rust-coloured wings and blue-black body with an attack it never wants to feel twice.

Adult tarantula hawks, famed for one of the most painful stings on Schmidt's index, mainly eat what?

Nectar from milkweed, soapberry and mesquite flowers fuels the adults, and the males never hunt at all.

Which neurotoxin in bullet ant venom jams open the sodium channels of nerve and muscle cells?

Poneratoxin stops the channels from switching off, so pain signals keep firing, and it is now being investigated for possible medical uses.

Which compound is the main cause of pain in the venom of the bees rated on Schmidt's index?

Melittin does most of the hurting in a bee's venom, while a smaller peptide called apamin acts on the nervous system instead.

Bulldog ants, which fill several rungs of Schmidt's pain index, are native to which country?

Australia is home to all but one of the 93 or more Myrmecia species, and the odd one out lives on New Caledonia.

Schmidt's pain index does for insect stings what which scale, named after its inventor, does for chili heat?

Scoville's scale began in 1912 as a taste test devised by a pharmacist, so it too started with human judges rather than instruments.

Schmidt's 1983 study that introduced his pain ratings mainly compared how well insect venoms destroy what?

Red blood cells burst when exposed to the venoms, the hemolytic power the study set out to rank, and its pain column was almost an aside.

Before the Sateré-Mawé initiation rite, how are the bullet ants first made safe to handle?

Dunked in a sedative, the ants go limp long enough to be woven into place, then wake up angry once the rite begins.

What coats the hands of a Sateré-Mawé initiate as his only protection during the bullet ant rite?

Charcoal is smeared on, supposedly to confuse the ants, and the ordeal has to be repeated 20 times before the initiation is complete.

Bullet ant nests, home to the top-rated stingers on Schmidt's pain index, are usually found in which spot?

At the bases of trees is the usual site, yet the workers climb to hunt small prey and gather sweet plant fluids as high as the upper canopy.

Justin Schmidt, creator of the sting pain index, died in 2023 from complications of which disease?

Parkinson's disease took him at 75, seven years after his book carried the index far beyond the world of insect science.